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The Sting of the Wild cover art

The Sting of the Wild

Written by: Justin O. Schmidt
Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
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Publisher's Summary

Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt is on a mission. Some say it's a brave exploration, others shake their heads in disbelief. His goal? To compare the impacts of stinging insects on humans, mainly using himself as the gauge.

In The Sting of the Wild, the colorful Dr. Schmidt takes us on a journey inside the lives of stinging insects, seeing the world through their eyes as well as his own. He explains how and why they attack and reveals the powerful punch they can deliver with a small venom gland and a "sting", the name for the apparatus that delivers the venom. We learn which insects are the worst to encounter and why some are barely worth considering.

The Sting of the Wild includes the complete Schmidt Sting Pain Index. In addition to a numerical ranking of the agony of each of the 83 stings he's sampled so far (from below one to an excruciatingly painful four), Schmidt describes them in prose worthy of a professional wine critic: "Looks deceive. Rich and full-bodied in appearance, but flavorless" and "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel."

©2016 Johns Hopkins University Press (P)2017 Tantor
Biological Sciences
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What the critics say

"Schmidt's tales will prove infectiously engaging even to entomophobes." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about The Sting of the Wild

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Profile Image for Tracey

Great listen

informative, entertaining and pretty funny. great read if you're interested in entomology. why someone would seek out painful stings to record them is beyond me. but I'm glad he did.

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