Here’s what it feels like to be stung by Asia’s ‘murder hornet’
Here’s what it feels like to be stung by the “murder hornet.”
An extreme-nature-show host allowed himself to be stung on camera by the “nightmarish” Asian giant hornet — which is believed to have first shown up in the US in December and experts warn will now inevitably arrive in the New York area.
“Oh, searing pain! Absolute searing pain!” Nathaniel “Coyote” Peterson screams in the episode on his YouTube channel “Brave Wilderness” in November 2018, in which he put the world’s largest hornet on his left forearm and was stung.
“My hand is completely seized up and clenched in place,” he adds, grimacing.
Peterson, 38, who also hosts Animal Planet’s “Coyote Peterson: Brave the Wild,” told The Post on Monday that the insect “is the kind of thing that formulates nightmares.
“In Japan, they actually call them the great sparrow bee because when they’re flying, they look like a bird,” he said, noting that the gigantic hornets have “a 3-inch wing span.
“It sounds like an apache helicopter — you can definitely hear them before you see them,” he said of the insects.
Peterson says in the video that it took days searching for “Japan’s most notorious insect” in the vast forests of the Asian country to find it.
“Look at that, it’s huge!” says Peterson before finally netting the monster orange and black insect.
Peterson puts the hornet — which is more than 2 inches long — in a jar with an orange top.
“Oh, my goodness, look how big it is! My hand is shaking,” Peterson says. “It’s huge, wow! I guess that’s why they call it the giant hornet.
“Look at that beast. … Everything about this creature screams, ‘Run in the other direction.’ ”
Still, the pain of its stinger is said to be only a 2 on a scale of 1 to 4, he notes.
It injects a toxin that can destroy the tissue of its victims and attack their nervous systems, Peterson says.
He says that while a single sting is not likely deadly unless someone goes into anaphylactic shock, more than 30 people a year die in Japan from the hornet because they are stung multiple times.
“But no matter how you break it down, this sting is incredibly dangerous,” he says. “If you were to be swarmed by 30 or 40 bees and be stung repetitively, yes, there is a good chance you will die.
“Now I’ve also heard that the venom is going to cook a hole in my arm. Not exactly looking forward to that. But it all depends on how my body reacts to the venom.”
Using tweezers, he picks up the hornet.
“My hands are shaking. I haven’t been this nervous since the tarantula,” he said, referring to a previous episode referring to a species of the giant spider.
“Oh, the stinger’s stuck in my arm!” he screams as he puts the hornet to his limb. “Oh, man, wave of dizziness really quick.”
His skin immediately begins to swell around the sting.
“When the stinger went into my arm, I had like this wave, this wave came over me. … The pain was immediate, immediately searing,” Peterson says.
“Not a 2,” he says, grunting, referring to the pain index, adding to The Post, “I would definitely say it’s up there at a 4.”
In the video, he then shows the massive raised welt on his arm and says it’s too sensitive to touch.
He has to even take his watch off because of the swelling spreading down his arm.