What are the big, red, fuzzy ants I see sometimes?
The one-inch-long, fuzzy, red and black “ants” that you see are not fire ants.
The females lay their eggs in bumblebee nests.
Many people assume that these big, red, stinging insects are fire ants.
Fire ants are actually quite small (1/16 to almost 1/4 inch long), with the largest workers two or three times larger than the smallest.
Sizes between different colonies can also vary greatly.
Some mounds may have mainly small workers, while others may have more large workers. Queens are about 1/4 inch long.
Description
Eastern velvet ants within the family Mutillidae (cow killers or velvet ants) are, in fact, not ants at all.
Adults are sexually dimorphic wasps, meaning that males and females look different. Females are wingless and can be seen running across grassy fields and open ground.
Males are winged and stingless.
The stinger of members of the order Hymenoptera is a modified egg laying device (“ovipositor”), so only females are capable of stinging.
The eastern velvet ant is the largest velvet ant in the United States, ranging from two-thirds of an inch to 1-inch (15 to 25 mm) in length.
The common name velvet ant originates from the velvety appearance of the dense hairs on most of the body.
Eastern velvet ant females are red or reddish orange in color with a black stripe or patch across the abdomen and black legs and antennae.
Male eastern velvet ants are similar in color pattern but are slenderer than females and possess two pairs of dark brown wings.
Larvae are pale white and grublike.
Adult eastern velvet ants are aposematic, meaning they signal their distastefulness.
Their bright red color and fuzzy appearance warns predators to stay away.
The cuticle, or exoskeleton, is slippery and rock hard.
The eastern velvet ant has a broad continental distribution in the United States but is most commonly encountered in the eastern half of the U.S. Students often see them in mulchy areas of the LSU campus during early fall.
Life Cycle
Cow killers are holometabolous insects, meaning they have egg, larva, pupa and adult life stages.
Adults seek burrows of ground nesting species (e.g., bumblebees, wasps, cicadas and other insects) and lay eggs on the larvae of these insects.
The eggs hatch into larvae that feed on the host larvae.
When fully developed, they pupate in the host’s brood chamber, overwinter and emerge as adults the following season.
How poisonous can a red, black and fuzzy ant be?
It sounds like you are referring to a solitary, wasp known as a “Velvet Ant” or sometimes called the “Cow Killer.”
One usually comes across the wingless females as they are moving across the ground.
They do look like large, colorful, velvety ants.
These wasps have a strong bite and a potent sting that will feel like a jolt of electricity when they sting, hurt like…well, hurt a lot, and usually cause swelling and or pain that persists for more than a day.
Female Velvet Ants Are Flightless and Look Different Than Males
Scientists like big terms for everything, so to say that males and females are different it’s called “sexual dimorphism” (males look different than females).
In many cases they have the even fancier distinction of “reverse sexual dimorphism” which sounds like a bunch kinky wasps, but it just means that males are bigger than females, and they look different from each other.
For a long time male and female velvet ants were not classified in the correct groups because they look so different.
Females are brightly colored and wingless (not all are red, some are orange or even black and white), and they hunt around on the ground while males can be a completely different color, they fly, and are found higher up in vegetation.
Matching the two required some pretty serious observations of ant-philes and researchers to figure out what was going on.