An ant that disappears into the forest floor, a bird that demands attention from mates—for these animals, an inky black ...

(blue line). Dr Lopez and collaborators pointed out that the velvet ants’ ultrablack is not just created by pigmentation. As they write in their paper, these structural colors “are formed in ...

The species in question is Traumatomutilla bifurca, a type of velvet ant – which is, somewhat confusingly, actually a species of wasp. Some of these wasps don't have any wings, but they do have ...

The sting of a female velvet ant is one of the most painful in the animal kingdom. Now, researchers have discovered that these insects have multiple proteins in their venom that make it ...