Entomologist Justin Schmidt and Cornell researcher Michael Smith jointly won for their painstaking experiments charting how painful insect stings are, and where the stings hurt worst. Smith pressed bees up against different parts of his body until the insects stung him, five stings a day, a total of 25 different locations, for 38 days. He rated the pain one to 10, and
published.
The most painful parts: the nostril, the upper lip, the shaft of the penis.
Smith was joined onstage by Schmidt, who has also sacrificed various parts of his body for science in his decades specializing in stinging insects. Schmidts sting pain index rates only on a scale of one to four, but also features the entomologists
descriptions of 78 sorts of stings, written with the flair of a sommelier in a wine cellar with something to prove.
The bald-faced hornet, for instance, is in Schmidts estimation: rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door. Yellowjackets, on the other hand, sting hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue. Both rate a two.
The four-plus-rated bullet ant, in contrast, punishes a victim with pure, intense, brilliant pain, like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch rusty nail grinding into your heel.
