pain scale for stings

[mith]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_Sting_Pain_Index

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

[canalon]

Funny, but I am wondering how they came with the comparisons:
Let's this ant in my hand, put the other one in HCl, no HCl is not strong enough... Bring the rusty nail... I guess you need quite a bunch of undergrads to write this kind of paper

[mith]

Haha, actually the pain test is done on grad students too. One of my profs talked about developing lancers(poking needles) for diabetes blood testing. He said that each prototype was tested by one of the lab members for a couple of weeks.

[MrMistery]

You guys make me think twice about joining a research lab at Harvard. Maybe it's not worth it

[sprite]

On the bullet ant:

It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours". In some indigenous communities, to enter manhood a boy has to endure being stung by the ant 5 times without screaming.

Remind me not to go to Paraguay. Ouch.