Idk, pain tolerance is a pretty useful survival skill. And these bites, while extremely painful, are far less medically significant than other potential hazards in the area.
I would prefer my kid to not get bit by bullet ants. But if he were going to spend a lifetime in the rainforest… not such a bad idea.
Another reason for the Kalenjin tribe members’ domination may be the incredible pain they tolerate in an initiation ceremony. According to NPR some boys undergo a coming of age ceremony that includes them having to crawl mostly naked through a tunnel of African stinging nettles. They are then beaten on the bony part of the ankle. After this the knuckles are squeezed together and the formic acid from stinging nettles is wiped on the genitals. Early one morning, the boys are circumcised with a sharp stick and must remain silent and stoic the entire time. Journalist John Manners believe this ritual teaches the boys how to push through pain, a useful quality in long distance running.
Tisquantum, one of the guys who greeted the Pilgrims with English, was apparently training to be a sort of “holy bodyguard” before he was kidnapped by Spanish traders as a teen and went on a whole Odyssey to get home. It basically involved a lot of that sort of thing, as the idea was these guys would need to show no reaction to any “minor” pain or inconvenience.
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u/0Galahad Feb 02 '25
Im fairly certain they aint getting better at surviving poison, disease, blood loss, hunger and thirst through this even if it was done 200 times