YouTube animal adventurer Coyote Peterson knows what his fan base likes. His mission is to educate viewers about animals and insects, and he is soon to take his talents to Animal Planet. But Peterson makes some of his biggest splashes when he lets the scariest-looking insects in the world bite or sting the absolute crap out of him on the Brave Wilderness YouTube channel.
Peterson has accumulated more than 140 million views by letting the insects at the top of the sting pain index sink their teeth (or stingers) into him. His reactions of immense pain are usually fantastic.
He’s vlogging less footage of the stinging or biting insect varieties lately, but Peterson returned to that niche in his latest video that documents a painful journey with a Japanese giant hornet. Peterson told the Daily Dot last week that it was the most painful sting he’d ever experienced, saying simply, “It was hard to take.”
Unfortunately for Peterson, the video backs him up 100 percent.
Peterson and his crew traveled to Japan to find the giant hornet. It took him days to actually catch one so he could lay it on his arm for the climactic sting, which he said injected a venom that can destroy tissue and attack the nervous system of its victim.
And this particular hornet looks pissed.
“Everything about this creature screams, ‘Run in the other direction,’” he said in the video. “Yet, here we are.”
At the top of that insect sting pain index is the bullet ant, which Peterson experienced in a vlog he uploaded two years ago. The hornet, he said, only ranked a 2 out of a maximum score of 4 on that chart. But Peterson soon discovered that the sting is still beyond painful. Maybe, he said later, the 2 actually should have been a 4.
After falling to the ground, a wave of dizziness engulfed him immediately, and he began to scream in agony. Within a minute, his arm started swelling, and in the hours following, he showed photographs of his arm blowing up to about double its normal size.
Peterson said that dozens of people in Japan die every year from taking multiple giant hornet stings. Only one sting probably won’t kill you, and the Daily Dot can confirm Peterson was alive last week, long after the vlog had been filmed and the sting had stuck in his arm. But if the video is any indication, it’s unlikely Peterson will ever put himself in position to take another.