What's the most painful sting in the world?

Top contenders for the nastiest sting range from bullet ants to warrior wasps and tiny jellyfish. To find out which is most painful, some adventurous experts have spent their lives getting stung.

Would you rather be walloped by boxer Mike Tyson or take a jackhammer to the kidneys? That's what it feels like to receive two of the world's most painful stings. When it comes to which is the worst, it's all a matter of taste.

Stinging animals – from familiar backyard buzzers to curious sea creatures – use a cocktail of chemical defences including neurotoxins and inflammatory agents to defend themselves or subdue prey. While biters (such as spiders and snakes) use their fanged mouths to administer venom, for stingers it's the other end you should steer clear of.

We asked experts about the most painful stings in the animal kingdom, setting aside lethality. Here's their ranking.

Stinging insects: Wasps, ants and bees (oh my)

The father of the modern getting-stung-on-purpose field was Justin Schmidt, an entomologist from Arizona who developed an eponymous sting pain index by subjecting himself to jabs from at least 96 species of insects, including bees, hornets, wasps and ants. He sorted stings into four tiers of pain, adding evocative, almost lyrical descriptions of each unique sensation (thankfully for us, Schmidt was an entomologist with the soul of a poet!).

The first level is home to the trivial. The sting of an anthophorid bee, for instance is "almost pleasant, a lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard". Level 2 sees some heavy hitters, like the honey wasp: "Spicy, blistering. A cotton swab dipped in habanero sauce has been pushed up your nose." And the fierce black polybia wasp: "A ritual gone wrong, satanic. The gas lamp in the old church explodes in your face when you light it."

The seven species in level 3 carry Schmidt into real torture: Dasymutilla klugii: "Explosive and long lasting, you sound insane as your scream. Hot oil from the deep fryer spilling over your entire hand."

Only three species ever earned a level 4 designation from Schmidt.    

Schmidt's first level 4 was the bullet ant, an inch-long arthropod from the rainforests of Central and South America often called the "24-hour ant" for how long the torment from its sting lingers: "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking through charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel."

Next came the tarantula hawk, a spider-hunting wasp the size of a golf tee with a near worldwide distribution. "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has been dropped into your bubble bath," Schmidt wrote, noting the effect lasted only a few minutes.

Finally, the warrior wasp (Synoeca septentrionalis), a colony-dwelling wasp native to Central and South America. "Torture. You are chained in the flow of an active volcano. Why did I start this list?"

Schmidt died due to complications from Parkinson's in 2023, but his heir apparent is Coyote Peterson, a YouTube personality who has subjected himself to stinging species that Schmidt never ranked. What Peterson lacks in formal science training, he makes up for in willingness to sacrifice his left forearm for the education and entertainment of millions of people who watch him writhe and sweat and scream on his channel, Brave Wilderness.

Peterson used Schmidt's pain index as a roadmap, aiming to "create the movie version" of Schmidt's 2016 book Sting of........

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