Velvet ants are not aggressive and will try to escape when encountered, but females have a very painful sting if handled. These brightly colored little monsters can cause a tremendous amount of pain with their stings. The red velvet ant, actually a wasp, is an external parasite of ground-nesting bees. However, that is only true in case you are dealing with a female red velvet ant. Males are similar but have wings and can not sting. Velvet ants are brightly colored. Females use a long, needle-like stinger concealed at the tip of the abdomen. Their common name velvet ant refers to their dense pile of hair, which most often is bright scarlet or orange, but may also be black, white, silver, or gold. Although commonly referred to as the red velvet ant (and in some cases cow killer ant), this name is misleading because velvet ants are actually wasps.

They just look similar to ants but they don’t create colonies or nests, because they are always on the move. The males look different from each other.

They look similar to the ants but are actually wasps. The red velvet ant is a striking insect that's a misnomer: It's actually a wasp, not an ant.

They are shades of yellow and brown or red and black.

Red velvet ants are species of wasps and they are called ants because of their hair on their back which can be colored in red, yellow, orange or white.

Red velvet ants are supposed to belong to the family of Multilidae to which other bees and wasps belong. What is peculiar about them is their sting.

These ants can’t fly … They are black overall with patches of dense orange-red hair on the thorax and abdomen. Their bright colors serve as aposematic signals.


The red velvet-ant is the largest velvet-ant species, reaching about 3/4 inch in length. They are known for their extremely painful stings, (the sting of the species Dasymutilla klugii rated a 3 on the Schmidt pain indexand lasts up to 30 minutes), hence the common name cow killer or c… This insect was named for its looks, not for its place in the biological order of critters. The red velvet ant, or cowkiller ant, is a wingless wasp with an extremely painful sting. They get the "velvet" part of their name from the very fuzzy females, which are wingless and often brightly colored. Male and female red velvet ants have a sexual dimorphism which means that the females and males have a slight difference in appearance. The Mutillidae are a family of more than 7,000 species of wasps whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. Red Velvet Ants are also referred to as the red wasps, velvet ants, and cow killer ants.

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