Does it have a gun? You’ll wish it did because that would probably be less painful than getting stung by Paraponera clavata, more commonly known as the Bullet Ant. Native to the lowland rainforests of Central and South America, it has a fearsome reputation amongst local peoples, and many other names, including hormiga veinticuatro in Venezuela, which translates as ’24-hour ant’. This refers to, and I kid you not, the length of time the pain tends to last!

Bullet Ants can be up to 30 mm in length, and are predatory, hunting insects on the forest floor, but also having a love of nectar. They’re generally not aggressive, except when their nest, usually containing several hundred ants, is disturbed. The sting is ranked as the most painful of all insect stings, described by Justin O. Schmidt (who has a pain index), as like ‘walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel’. That was from a single animal. Imagine getting stung by scores of them, and remember, the pain lasts around a full day. A direct ancestor was found in Dominican amber dating back as far as 45 million years, so pain is obviously a handy evolutionary characteristic…

Like the original Tarantula Hawk coin, Melbourne Coins second entry into their ‘Kings of Sting’ series is a one-ounce silver coin, antique finished, with some nice restrained colour on the subject. A Bullet Ant is depicted in full, looking forward, sitting above a background of leafy forest floor. A title bar crosses the coin nearer the bottom, and the obverse features the usual effigy of King Charles III, bordered by the issue details. A cool coin, these look great in hand compared to the images here.