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The Worst Insect Stings on Earth Ranked

MyWildBackyard

668,096 views

What's the worst sting in the world? And the least serious? Ever wondered how the insects in YOUR backyard ranked up? In this video, we'll see how all of the common and most venomous insects rank up in a complete insect sting tier list!

Music in this video:

Aware - Adrian Berenguer
Blue Beings - Tamuz Dekel
Citadel - Ardie Son
Court Scheme - Roberto Prado
Crystal Gaze - Theatre of Delays
Dark Blood - Jimmy Svensson
Impulse - DJ Backscratch
Lifes Journey Begins - idokay
Memento - Nobou
Particles - Nobou
Pianissimo - Adrian Berenguer
Potencial - Adrian Berenguer
She Wolf - Ardie Son
Strange Connection - Nobou
Waiting and Hoping - Lance Conrad

My name is Spencer Hoffman. I’m a biologist and filmmaker from North Carolina and my goal is to find the most extreme life forms in the world—from the strangest, to the deadliest— and capture the stories of how their insane lifestyles help them to survive on our Weird Planet.

#insects #venomous

20 Comments

@MyWildBackyard Creator 1 month ago Pinned

Should we explore some lesser known venomous creatures next? What would you like to see investigated?

@Steve_C66 1 month ago

I got stung by a Bullet Ant in Costa Rica on a cruise excursion. Boy was that a regrettable experience.

@Jlmccurnin 1 month ago

When I was younger, I had the bright idea to pick up a velvet ant, or as we called them "cow ants" to show it to my mom. I thought I was smart by picking it up with an oak leaf as a protective barrier. As you'd guess, it ended up stinging me, through the leaf and into my thumb. My hand swelled up and look like a cartoon. My fingers, especially my thumb were on the verge of exploding from the pressure inside. Worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. Including being bitten by a water moccasin and hospitalized for 2 weeks.

@GnomeyOneBaloney 1 month ago

The Bullet Ant glove ritual from the Amazon must feel like molten lava for a few days or weeks.

@chriskuzianik9507 1 month ago

My grandfather ran over a yellow jacket nest mowing a lawn, one day. He was stung over 170 times and spent 3 days in bed recovering from it.

@vipersbladeify 1 month ago

Seeing the Paper Wasp up in B-Tier makes me feel way better about how bad it was when I got stung on the back of my calf when I was 12. There was like small hole where I got stung for awhile, I can still find the scar 15+yrs later

@dragoon3219 1 month ago (edited)

Another interesting fact about velvet ants is that they are extremely tough. They have some of the strongest exoskeletons that are upwards of six to seven times the strength of similar insects like ants and other wasps. It's why one of the most common ways people get stung by them is stepping on them with thin shoes (or barefoot) as even your whole body weight isn't enough to crush one unless it's on concrete or a rock. You'll just push it into the dirt and it'll sting in retaliation to get you off.

@maamold 1 month ago

Bald-Faced hornet sting survivor here. Hurt like hell for the first day. 2 weeks later the sting came back with a vengeance and started itching and throbbing like mad.

@johnhamaker8441 19 hours ago

I've been stung by bumble bees, honey bees, velvet ants , a dozen yellow jackets, the one that exceed all others by a factor of 10 +++ was the bald face hornet, days of pain and swelling 😢

@brockemsockem2504 1 month ago

When I was a kid I sat on a dead log with a Yellowjacket nest inside and fell through it. I was wearing shorts and the yellowjackets were pissed. They flew up my shorts and I got stung seven times where the sun don’t shine. Still am terrified of wasps to this day

@idiosyntactic 1 month ago

Was stung by a giant hornet in Hokkaido. Biking, so thankfully one just crashed into me, got angry, stung and was shaken off. Still, there was a slightly under dime-sized circle of ghost white flesh w/ oddly no welt and it was quite painful for a few days. Idk maybe the daily biking mitigate the localized effect, but I'll never forget that sting.

@BANANA42k 1 month ago (edited)

Fun fact, you can find over half this list in Oklahoma.

Not to mention its deadly snake and spider species too.

Its like a mini Australia

@lorchid23 1 month ago

Here at my house in southeast Tennessee, we have a wooden privacy fence that’s got a LOT of carpenter bees in it that attract the red velvet ants. Out of sheer curiosity, my husband caught one of the velvet ants and placed it into a fishing cricket cage just to watch it for a while.
The dadgum thing would stop running around in the cage and start sort of doing a weird little dance while making a bizarre, LOUD buzzing noise. We half-joked that it almost sounded like it was a ticking time bomb and was going to explode, sending guts all over the place. Yeah, they’re very interesting and scary, for sure. 😂

@chojinnppp 1 month ago

I've kept velvet ants. They are pretty charming and even "chirp" or squeak occasionally.

@Tenskwatawa4U 1 month ago

WHEELBUG!!! About a year ago I was on the rear deck of where I lived at that time, in Virginia Beach, enjoying a cigar and a beer, and one of these landed on the rail right next to me! I recognized it as some sort of assassin bug, so I didn't provoke it. But I watched it stroll within a foot of me, and took a couple iPhone closeups, including an animated GIF within inches of it.

After a minute or so, it flew off to the corner of the second floor roof, and that was the end of the close encounter of the first kind. I was mostly shocked by HOW BIG the thing was! It was AT LEAST 3 inches long.

@masosan-zlitz 1 month ago

Myrmecia is the only species I’m actually scared to keep. Part from the sting and part being they cost $400 for a queen and can just die randomly.

@okra2958 13 days ago

When I was about 10 years old… 42 years ago, I was stung by a cow killer on the knuckle. I will never forget the pain and swelling from that sting. 😳

@DustinGieser1992 1 month ago (edited)

In the whole of the thirty four years I've been alive, in my opinion, the worst sting I've ever received was from the neo tropical Executioner wasp of South America to the back of my head. It literally left a good sized divet of a crater in my head. Which hurts from time to time to this day.

@NovaSolaria 4 weeks ago

we have paper wasps all around our house. As long as you dont swat at them, theyre thankfully very chill

@Patrick2Chill 1 month ago

I’m allergic to bee venom. I was stung on my face one time as a kid. I had to be rushed to the hospital because my face swelled so much I couldn’t breathe or see because my eyes were swollen shut. And let me tell you it’s terrifying to be in the dark and not being able to breathe. Luckily I got to the hospital in time. After that, I always had to carry an EpiPen.