Scientists found that the dark markings on a species of fluffy wasp reflected less than 1 percent of light. By Katrina Miller The first thing to understand about velvet ants is that they are not ...

The wasp species known as the "velvet ant" has a pattern of white and ultra-black coloration. © shrike2 via iNaturalist under CC BY-NC 4.0 The Caatinga is a stark ...

As it happens, velvet ants, known colloquially to Brazilians as “sorcerer ants,” are actually a type of wasp, but the females ...

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 ...

When you see a red velvet ant, the first thing you will probably ask yourself is “what the heck is that thing?” It kind of looks like a giant ant, but it also looks like a wingless wasp.

Gall of Indiana’s Hanover College and colleagues. Velvet ants are not actually ants. They belong to a family of more than 3,000 wasps found worldwide. Around 480 species have been reported from ...

Few creatures can tangle with a velvet ant and walk away unscathed. These ground-dwelling insects are not ants, but parasitic wasps known for their excruciating stings. Now researchers have ...

Velvet ants are in fact a family of wingless wasps with more than 7000 species. The researcher Justin Schmidt, who invented the Schmidt sting pain index, described their sting as “explosive and ...