Ants may seem harmless, but some species pose serious threats due to their venom, aggressive behavior, or destructive habits.

An international team of scientists recently published detailed studies of a Brazilian species of velvet ant that they discovered to have superblack, or ultrablack, patches. An ultrablack ...

A velvet ant bite like “hot oil from the deep fryer” delivers an array of peptides that inflicts pain on insects and mammals alike.

Crawling along the underbrush of the tropical savannas of Brazil, there’s a powerful and mysterious insect known as the velvet ant. Actually a kind of wasp, wingless females of this species ...

The sting of a female velvet ant is one of the most painful in the animal kingdom. Now, researchers have discovered that these insects have multiple proteins in their venom that make it ...

Despite their name and looks, velvet ants are actually wasps. Many of these delightfully fuzzy insects exhibit bright, contrasting shades of black with red, orange or white. Their bold bodies serve as ...

Wasps aren’t normally admired for their looks, but one species—Traumatomutilla bifurca, a Brazilian velvet ant—is unlike any other. It has ultra-dark markings that reflect less than 1 ...

BRASILIA, Brazil – A new study has revealed the complex makeup of an ant found in South America that can absorb nearly all visible light. Researchers analyzed the velvet ant’s exoskeleton and ...

The first thing to understand about velvet ants is that they are not, in fact, ants. They're wasps, some of which are wingless, and are named in part for their fluffy exteriors. About the size of ...

The ants are a significant threat to the island’s endemic population of red crabs, displacing the ... including the velvet ant, which is actually a hairy, wingless wasp.