Schmidt says most of the stings he received - and virtually all of the really painful ones - haven been unintentional, because he’s “far too much of a chicken for that.”

Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. So, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to try to apply this as kind of an artistic equivalent?’” “That’s the way our species communicates and really understands things. We think in terms of images and art and beauty and song,” Schmidt explains. “I realized that most of us don’t think in terms of numbers. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.” The Sweat Bee, for example, which ranks as a one on the pain scale, feels “Light and ephemeral. He also describes each sting with evocative, even poetic, language.

Schmidt ranks each insect sting on a scale of one to four, with four being the most painful. (Check out Michelle Enemark’s illustration of Schmidt’s findings, courtesy of Atlas Obscura. Schmidt has gathered all this data in a new book called “The Sting of the Wild.” He is also the creator the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, an entertainingly original way of measuring and describing the relative pain insects inflict on humans and other animals. In fact, he has been bitten and stung close to a thousand times by a wide variety of painful creatures.

Schmidt, a biologist at the Southwest Biological Institute has. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel.”įortunately, you probably have never encountered a Bullet Ant. If you’ve ever been bitten by a Bullet Ant, then you’ve experienced a “pure, intense, brilliant pain.

Sweat bee bite pictures