The Bullet Ant
A Bullet Ant is a huge, black stinging ant that livs in Central and South America, from the Amazon basin to Nicaragua. It's about 1 to 1 1/4 inch long, and it is the largest ant in Central America. One well-known and respected U.S. entomologist, Dr. Robert Matthews, excavated Bullet Ant nests in Peruvian rain forests a number of times in the 1990s. He was stung more than a dozen times. Each ant sting is 30 times as powerful as a typical bee or wasp sting. Eventually, he caught a queen ant and brought it back to breed the first colony of Bullet Ants in the U.S. While Bullet Ants have large mouthpieces (called mandibles), you don't need to worry about ant bites, because the real sting is in the tail. All the worker ants are females and they often return to the nest with nectar in the large mandibles. Many people who are stung by a Bullet Ant will have a fever and remain sick up to three days. The powerful sting of the Bullet Ant feels like being stung by a bullet or impaled with a red-hot nail. While the sting is usually not life threatening, if you are stung then the toxic sting can cause fiery pain, similar to a bullet would, and can cause temporary paralysis, trembling, and nausea. Anytime you are stung by anything, you should save the body of the thing that stung you. Another name of the Bullet Ant is Bala Ant. "Bala" means "bullet" in Spanish.