CHICAGO — The most dangerous animal at Shedd Aquarium is about 2 inches long and is kept in a double-locked, double-doored secured room.
And it's not a fish.
The miniature menace is the bullet ant, title-holder for owning the most painful sting known to man, 30 times more painful than a bee's sting. In parts of its native Amazon region, hundreds of the ants are captured and put into special gloves that local tribesmen wear as a sign of bravery and manhood. The glove wearers are stung so many times, they frequently go into shock and their hands become swollen.
Shedd aquarist Daniel Lorbeske has been stung once in the thumb by the ants during his decade-plus tenure at the aquarium.
"That was enough," he said. "My thumb went numb for several hours."
One of his co-workers was stung in the forearm and felt "very uncomfortable" for two days. When the ants are fed or their cages are cleaned, two Shedd personnel are always on hand, holding 18-inch-long stainless steel forceps to keep the ants at bay. They're named bullet ants because the pain they inflict feels like a gunshot wound, Lorbeske said.
Shedd has about 640 bullet ants. Thirty-eight are on public display in the "Amazon Rising" exhibit behind protective glass. The other 600 are in the secure room. The U.S. Agriculture Department conducts inspections every few years to make sure the exhibit and secure room are up to standards, which include screen-covered air vents and drain lines.
The ants have never escaped, but if they do, Shedd has its own "escape preparedness protocols."
Lorbeske said if there is an escape, entire areas of the aquarium would be closed off while staff looked for the ants with flashlights. He said fire extinguishers equipped with carbon dioxide are good deterrents because the gas knocks the ants out.
The ants almost certainly couldn't live on their own in Chicago because they couldn't handle frost or the winter, Lorbeske said.
The adult ants eat sugar water — 90 grams of sugar mixed with about 1 liter of water — while the younger larvae dine on mealworms and larval stages of beetles and moths.
Lorbeske said he's endlessly fascinated with the ants because of their stinging power and their jaws, which can chew through mesh.
"They're just a really neat animal to work with," he said.
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