Meet the sommelier of insect stings

A yellowjacket sting is "hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W.C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue."

Harvester ant
(Image credit: (Erich Schlegel/Corbis))

As summer creeps in to my backyard, so does a deep fear that any one of the insects flitting about the patio might decide to land on a spot of exposed flesh and sink its stinger into me. The paranoia is so strong that I keep a shoe within arm's reach so I can swat at anything that flies, jumps, or crawls my way. And there's good reason for that.

"The thing about arthropod stings that makes them so scary is not just that they hurt — it's that they're actually designed to hurt," writes University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum. "Arthropod venom is a fiendish mixture of pharmacologically active substances that for the most part serve no function in the life of the organism producing them other than to inflict pain on other organisms."

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