Image appears here with kind permission.) An international team of scientists recently published detailed studies of a Brazilian species of velvet ant that they discovered to have superblack ...

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 ...

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

This species has a red thorax with bold black-and-white markings on the abdomen. Unusually for a velvet ant, instead of searching out the nests of solitary species to lay their eggs in, M. europaea ...

The ants are a significant threat to the island’s endemic population of red crabs ... There are several wasp species that closely resemble ants, including the velvet ant, which is actually ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

About the size of a board game die, one species of velvet ant is known for its distinct black-and-white markings, which dazzle the eye as the creatures scurry across tropical savanna and a dry ...