If asked which is the most dangerous animal in the world most people would probably guess something like a lion or snake, and even though they can both be dangerous when they want to be, they are far from making the top of the list. If you were thrown into a pit with something like a bear or a wolf you’d probably have a very bad time, but in terms of how many people these animals kill naturally in the wild their combined total is less than 1% of something like a crocodile.
This list also doesn’t contain highly poisonous creatures since a list of every creature in the world that has poison strong enough to kill you would be huge, but since the chances of someone picking up a cone snail or poison arrow frog and licking it are quite small, they generally cause very few deaths worldwide. So here’s a list of the most dangerous animals in terms of deaths caused.
1) Mosquito’s – 750,000 deaths per year
At the top of the list is an animal that has single handedly caused more deaths around the planet than all human wars combined throughout history. The World health organisation estimates the number of deaths each year caused by these annoying insects is close the 750,000, and this number is only as low as it is due to advances in medicine.
A few decades ago if you were bitten by a mosquito carrying a deadly disease like malaria or yellow fever then you would most likely die from it. Today there are a number of treatments for the various plagues mosquito’s carry but unfortunately they aren’t readily available in the areas of the world they are most needed. For a little comparison to an animal many associate with danger, bears in north America caused 63 human deaths between 1900 and 2009 according to a study by the Journal of Wildlife Management, which is not even the equivalent of 2 per year. It would take mosquito’s less than 2 minutes to kill as many people as bears have over the last 100 years.
2) Snakes – Around 100,000 deaths per year
The problem with snakes isn’t how aggressive they are, but rather how dangerous their venom is. There are far more dog bits per year globally than snakes, but fortunately dogs don’t come with deadly toxins in their teeth. According the World health organisation there are between 81,410 and 137,880 deaths per year caused by snakes, and almost three times as many permanent disabilities including amputations.
The vast majority of deaths happen in south America, Africa and the lower countries of Asia like India and the far east. If you live in India and are bitten by a snake there’s around a 1 in 4 chance you’ll die, with several thousand snake related deaths happening in the country each year, were as in the UK the last person to die from a snake bite was a 5 year old in 1975 who was bitten on the ankle by an adder.
3) Dogs – 25,000 deaths per year
(A vicious attack hound ready to kill at a moments notice)
Even though they love a good scratch behind the ears, dogs can also be deadly when they want to. Normally a result of bad training or not being looked after properly, dogs are thought to kill around 25,000 people each globally. The vast majority of these numbers are due to people being bitten by dogs and dying from a disease like rabies, instead of being physically killed by the animal during an attack.
The majority of these rabies related deaths happen in India were there’s a huge homeless dog population, but in places like the US you are much more likely to contract the disease from a bat or raccoon than you are from a dog.
4) Freshwater snails – 20,000 deaths per year
An unlikely creature to find on a list of the worlds most dangerous animals, and to be fair the snail is a rather peaceful creature. This doesn’t change the fact that it carries a very nasty disease called schistosomiasis which kills up to 200,000 people a year globally. The snail is thought to be responsible for about 10% of these, around 20,000 deaths, most of which happen in south-east Asian countries.
The snails prefer to live in still or slow moving waters, with rice fields being a perfect place for them. In order to contract the disease you must come into contact with the snail itself or still water the snail has been in long enough to infect, making rice fields the number one spot to contract the illness.
5) Humans – 500,000 deaths per year
Every year humans kill around 500,000 people across the globe, which includes all murders, police and army killings and human caused accidents, and these are only the numbers we know about. The real figure would be much higher as many deaths in Africa and south America go unreported, putting the real number closer to 750,000.
Even though we have invented cool stuff like pizza and aeroplanes, we also happen to be the only species on earth that actively seeks out conflict based on factors outside territory and food, though both have made good excuses to go and kill each other in the past.