Animals With Stingers

Certain animals have developed stinging as a form of defense or hunting. Venomous stings can have a local reaction, meaning pain and redness around the sting site, or a systemic reaction, meaning redness, pain, hives or airway and circulatory problems across the whole body. While many stinging animals are insects or arachnids, there are marine animals that also have stingers.

Stinging Wasps

• Stinging wasps have warning colors, either yellow, brown, blue or red. Wasps have pointed abdomens attached to the thorax by a thin waist called a petiole. They build papery nests from wood fibers. The colonies that live in these nests are led by one egg-laying queen. The female nest-building workers are the only ones with stingers, which are modified egg laying apparatuses. If threatened, they will gather into a stinging swarm to protect the nest. Wasps have the ability to sting repeatedly.

Honeybees

• Honeybees are highly social insects. Worker bees are sexually undeveloped females. They build hives, forage for pollen and nectar for food and circulate air within the hive by beating their wings, among other tasks. The queen's main job is to lay eggs, though she also directs activity within the hive. Male bees are called drones. In winter months when the hive needs to conserve resources, drones are expelled. Honeybees can only sting once, causing the bee to die, as the stinger and the venom sack get stuck in the victim's flesh after use.

Stingrays

• Stingrays are fish that spend most of their time buried in shallow sand. Their coloring and pattern, for camouflage purposes, often match the ocean floor where they reside. Stingrays have relatively flat bodies with pectoral fins that are joined with the head and trunk. The mouth, nostrils and gills are on the underside while the eyes are on the top. They have teeth powerful enough to crush mollusks. The barb or spine stinger, used for protection, at the end of the tail has venom powerful enough to be fatal. It can even work after the ray has died.

Scorpions

• Scorpions are nocturnal, elongated arachnids. During the day they will hide under rocks or in self-made burrows. They have four sets of legs. The front two legs have pincers used for prey capture and mating practices. The legs contain organs that detect ground vibrations. The scorpion's curved tail ends in a bulbous structure that contains the stinger and venom glands. They paralyze their prey, usually insects but sometimes mice or lizards, with the stinger before liquefying the tissue with acid. Some males will sting the female during mating. Scorpions can actively regulate the potency of their venom as needed.