Thread by @DrAdrianSmith

Have you ever been stung by an ant? I made a video for you. I filmed something that’s never been filmed before (as far as I can tell).

This is what happens underneath your skin when an ant is stinging you!

[thread below, full video here: ]

A year ago I filmed this shot of an fire ant getting ready sting my finger. In the corner of the frame was something I hadn’t seen before. Venom being pumped out of stinger.

That’s the thing that hadn’t been filmed: how an ant pumps venom from its stinger.

It’s a crazy thing to try to film. Even big stingers, like the harvester ant one below, are thinner than a hair on your head. About 40microns wide. And the venom pumping action is faster than a blink of an eye.

To capture venom delivery, I filmed them at 1,000fps jabbing their stinger through a thin wax film. Most attempts were total failures. This is 1 of about 6 shots that worked out. I probably spent ~30hrs trying to capture footage like this.

Here’s the setup I used to film it. Macro lens maxed out at 5x. Lit from underneath and lit from the side with a CRAZY bright light. Like “get the welding glasses” crazy.

Anyway, a stinger is 3 parts. A stylet and 2 lancets that form a hollow canal through which venom is pumped. Venom is pumped through moving the lancets back and forth, beyond the length of the stylet. (see next tweet)

Watch the droplets of venom form when as the stylet are pumped back and forth! WOW! On average, the ants that I filmed can pump a lancet (and therefore a droplet of venom) 13x a second.

Having an effective, and fast, venom delivery system is super important for a lot of ant species. It’s hard to sting things that don’t want to be stung. To illustrate that, I shot this slow-motion scene of a harvester ant & mealworm rodeo!

If you’ve made it this far, you should go watch the full 3min video on my AntLab YouTube channel. It’s all this & more, explained a little better.
Ok?
Thanks.