The scarlet velvet ant is very well known for its extremely painful sting. Less well known is that the velvet ant is not actually an ant at all—it is a type of wingless parasitic wasp. The ...

The species in question is Traumatomutilla bifurca, a type of velvet ant – which is, somewhat confusingly, actually a species of wasp. Some of these wasps don't have any wings, but they do have ...