Bug card No. 0218 of 1,500

Bullet ant

Paraponera clavata

Name means: “bullet, because people say its sting hurts like being shot”

The bullet ant is a big reddish-black ant that looks a bit like a wasp without wings. It lives in the rainforests of Central and South America.

Lives in

Central and South America, in warm, wet lowland rainforests

Length

1.8 to 3 cm (0.71 to 1.2 in)

Top speed

about 0.73 km/h (0.45 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Can bite or sting

What does it eat?

It is a hunter. It searches the forest floor, bushes and trees for small animals to eat.

How big is it?

as long as 5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 4.9 seconds

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Bullet ant about 0.73 km/h (0.45 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

cool stuff

When it is upset, it makes a squeaking sound by rubbing parts of its body together.

A nest has several hundred ants and is usually at the bottom of a tree.

Its queen is hardly bigger than the worker ants.

you asked

?How big is a bullet ant?

The workers are 18 to 30 millimetres long, which is huge for an ant.

Paraponera clavata (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
Picture by Hans Hillewaert. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.