Monday, July 22, 2013

Hey, Billy Connolly Got His Meter!

"The 'sting-o-meter' that tells you which insects cause most pain (by researcher who's been stung by just about everything)"

Most of us get stung by an insect occasionally and grumble about it for a couple of minutes before forgetting about it.

Not so for one researcher from Arizona.

Justin Schmidt, from the Southwestern Biological Institute, has been stung so many times that he decided to create a pain scale to rate the insects’ stings.


Here's the list:

Fire Ant - one (pain lasts two to four minutes)
Honeybee - two (pain lasts up to ten minutes)
Bumblebee - two (pain for up to five minutes)
German Yellowjacket - two (pain lasts four to ten minutes)
Velvet Ant - three (pain for up to 30 minutes)
Harvester Ant - three (pain for one to eight hours)
Paper Wasp - three (pain for five to 15 minutes)
Warrior Wasp - four (pain for up to two hours)
Tarantula Hawk - four (pain for three minutes)
Bullet Ant - four (pain for 12 to 24 hours)



Comedian Billy Connolly, of course, envisioned such a pain scale - - and a meter to measure it - - in his classic skit Stonefish, or The Worst Pain Known To Man:

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Great skit, and I'll pass on the 'experience' of those...

J.R.Shirley said...

RC got stung by some sort of wasp two days ago. He was unhappy for about 10 minutes.

...and now, he has insect PTSD. :-D