Bites from insects and sea creatures can inflict unimaginable suffering on us due to their cocktails of toxins. But how do you know which one is really the most painful? Experts like Justin Schmidt and Coyote Peterson have voluntarily exposed themselves to hundreds of injections to establish accurate pain ratings. A masochistic and fascinating enterprise.
Daring entomologist Justin Schmidt created the Sting Pain Index by being bitten by 96 species of insects. Its scale goes from 1 (light) to 4 (unbearable), all accompanied by poetic descriptions: the attack of a bee Anthophora East “almost pleasant, like a loving bite to the earlobe”, reports a BBC subject. At level 2, the wasp sting Brachygastra mellifica evokes “a cotton swab dipped in habanero sauce stuck in your nose”.
The seven level 3 species mark a real threshold in suffering. The ant Dasymutilla klugii –a species of wingless wasp resembling an ant– causes pain “explosive and lasting, like boiling oil from a fryer spilled all over your hand”.
Only three species reach the top at Justin Schmidt. The ant Paraponera or gunshot ant, from Central America, inflicts a “pure, intense, bright pain, like walking on hot coal with an 8 cm nail in your heel”and this for twenty-four hours. The spider-hunting wasp offers its human victim a shock “blinding, electric, a hairdryer falling into your bath”. Finally, when a wasp Synoeca septentrionalis plunges his stinger into your flesh, you are like “chained in a molten volcano”.
Not just insects in life
After Justin Schmidt died in 2023 (from complications related to Parkinson’s disease, no wasps here), YouTuber Coyote Peterson took over and continued the experiment, testing 30 additional species. He will add the executioner wasp to level 4 (Polistes carnifex), whose pain lasts twelve hours and leaves a necrotic scar “like a cigarette burn”.
The cnidarians are not left out. Tiny as a thimble, irukandji jellyfish do not have a particularly painful sting, barely more than that of a mosquito. They can nevertheless be the cause of Irukandji syndrome, occurring a few minutes later and triggering intense headaches, lower back pain, muscle pain but also nausea and vomiting, up to tachycardia or pulmonary edema.
These symptoms can take up to thirty hours to subside. Lisa-Ann Gershwin, an Australian expert, also notes in some victims of the small jellyfish a feeling of catastrophe, of imminent death so powerful that patients beg doctors to finish them off.
Do you want more? The Australian box jellyfish, which has the nicknames sea wasp or the hand of death, leaves whip marks on its victim as if marked by “boiling oil”. The bearded fireworm (Hermodice carunculata) burns its victim for hours thanks to its stinging hairs, and the stony lionfish, camouflaged as a rock, injects a venom causing swelling and stinging for weeks.
If there were only two left, it would probably be the gunshot ant or the irukandji jellyfish, but it is difficult to decide as the experience varies depending on the person, and the pain can take different forms. Only one way to decide between them: go and test them yourself.
