These things are so cool.
Velvet ants are technically wasps, but the females are wingless. What makes them different from ants is that their thorax is larger than their head whereas an ant’s thorax would be smaller. The velvet ant also has no joint on its antennae unlike an ant.
These wasps produce one of the most painful stings of all insects, and it isn’t even that venomous. The stinger is also its ovipositor, so it lays eggs with it, too… and it’s REALLY… LONG.
The velvet ant has one of the strongest exoskeletons of any insect. It’ll take way way more than a shoe to kill this thing.
