There are things in life that we instinctively know to avoid. Be it pain or bugs or indeed bugs that can cause pain, we can all agree that evasion is the way forward. 

That is of course unless you’re Justin Schmidt. As an entomologist, he has devoted his life, not only to the study of insects but more specifically to the study of the pain that those insects can inflict.

The result of this rather odd pursuit is that he has been stung about a thousand times by about 150 species, allowing him to create the Schmidt Pain Index and receive a subsequent Ig Nobel prize in 2015 for that research.

Justin Schmidt is an Entomologist at the Southwestern Biological Institute which is associated with the Department of Entomology at the University of Arizona, author of The Sting of the Wild and creator of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index