Apparently the worst possible thing you can be stung by is a bullet ant.

So I told him about my bullet ant in Panama.

A local told me it was called the bullet ant and suggested that I pick it up for a closer look.

"The bullet ant is nothing compared to this."

I wasn’t allergic to bullet ants, they said.

Huge bullet ants marched across the trail.

He told Weather.com that a bullet ant has the most painful sting he has encountered.

According to sting expert Schmidt, the tarantula hawk rates just below the agonizing bullet ant.

The large number of nest plants suggests little active selection of nest sites by bullet ants.

Bullet ants at the Palais de la Decouverte, a Paris science museum.

Men must wear gloves with hundreds of bullet ants woven in for ten minutes: the ants' stings cause severe pain and paralysis.

Joining the bullet ant at four is a critter that lives right here in the southwestern US: the tarantula hawk.

Schmidt's rating gives a poetic description of the bullet ant's sting: "Pure, intense, brilliant pain.

He says that the most painful is a bullet ant (pictured) which he says 'makes you want to lay down and die'

Then he moved on to the silent creatures, including the formiga-cabo-verde, called the bullet ant in English and found in colonies at the base of trees.

Only the sting of the Bullet Ant, Paraponera clavata, is ranked higher, with a 4+ rating.

"Avoid the handrails," advised Willy, as a marauding bullet ant (its sting explains the name) trundled past.

"A bullet ant," surmised José Elias, our unflappable guide.

Tribal traditions can be harmful to males; for instance, the Satere-Mawe tribe use bullet ants as an initiation rite.

The chemical induces altered states of consciousness, psychological or physiological (e.g., bullet ant venom used by the Satere-Mawe people).

The study on BCI concluded trees with buttresses and extrafloral nectaries may be selected for by bullet ants.

There are many things to be wary of in the rain forest: jaguars, anacondas, tarantulas, fierce bullet ants whose sting feels like a gunshot wound.

P. clavata is commonly known as the bullet ant, the lesser giant hunting ant and conga ant.

He was later replaced by Zack Bates, formerly of the bands Bullet Ant and Serosia.

Bullet ants, from the genus Paraponera, are found from Nicaragua southward to the Amazon Basin.

The species include Paraponera clavata (tocandira) and Dinoponera spp.

Only the sting of the Bullet Ant, Paraponera clavata, is ranked higher, with a 4+ rating.

Poneratoxin is a paralyzing neurotoxic peptide from the bullet ant Paraponera clavata that affects voltage-dependent sodium ion channels and blocks the synaptic transmission in the central nervous system.

Paraponera clavata was first described by Danish zoologist Johan Christian Fabricius, who named it Formica clavata in his 1775 publication Systema entomologiae, based on a worker he collected.

The genus is known from the Amazon region in South America, where they nest in soil, rotten wood or cavities excavated by other animals (beetle galleries or nests of the bullet ant, Paraponera clavata).

In 1858, the genus Paraponera was established by British entomologist Frederick Smith, who designated Paraponera clavata as the type species by monotypy (the condition of a taxonomic group having only a single taxon described).

Until 1994, Paraponera clavata was the sole member of the genus Paraponera and the subfamily Paraponerinae, but the extinct Paraponera dieteri from the Miocene was described by Cesare Baroni Urbani.

He leans casually against a tree, oblivious to the possibility of disturbing a dread Paraponera clavata, a giant ant with a giant sting, and dumps a vacuum aspirator full of dirt and tiny Adelomyrmex ants onto his lap.

It consists of two species: the extant Paraponera clavata, also known as a bullet ant, found in the Neotropics, and the very small fossil species Paraponera dieteri known from Dominican amber (Early Miocene; 16-19 million years ago).

In the conclusion, some descriptions of the most painful examples were given, e.g.: "Paraponera clavata stings induced immediate, excruciating pain and numbness to pencil-point pressure, as well as trembling in the form of a totally uncontrollable urge to shake the affected part."