Animals fatally maul, sting, trample and chew about a million humans per year. Pretty nice of them, given the numbers on our side – the average of 551 million chickens killed in Australia every year, for instance. In an ideal world, no one would ever get mauled by a bear, or contract rabies from a feral squirrel. But for this Giz Asks, we’re asking which creatures are most desperate for our blood (or, in fairness to the animal kingdom, which are most likely to kill us by accident). We reached out to a number of animal experts to figure out exactly that: Which non-parasitic, non-microbial animals kill the most humans, as well as which ones are the most potentially dangerous. Mosquitoes, it turns out, don’t just ruin summers – they also kill upwards of a quarter of a million people every single year. But as we learned from our experts, they’re the outlier: Animal-on-human homicide seems to be relatively rare, at least compared to the human-on-human kind, which – as nearly all our experts pointed out – exceeds it by many magnitudes (not counting mosquitoes). That said, there are plenty of animals with blood on their paws, or their scales, or – who knew! – their hooves. Dave BarashProfessor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington, animal behaviour researcher, and the co-author of The Mammal in the Mirror: Understanding Our Place in the Animal World and many other books
Rory WilsonProfessor of Aquatic Biology at Swansea University
Brian ToddAssociate Professor, Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology and head of Todd Lab at UC Davis
Madhusudan KattiAssociate Professor in the Forestry & Environment Resources Department at NC State University whose research includes “the evolutionary ecology of vertebrate responses to human modification of habitats, and on the dynamics of coupled natural and human systems”
But what about sharks?James SulikowskiProfessor of Marine Science and head of Sulikowski Shark and Fish Research Lab at the University of New England
When it comes to the most dangerous animals in Australia, the list is quite overwhelming (at least to our overseas friends). We’re almost infamous for it, and even though sharks, spiders and snakes get the majority of bad press, the Australian Geographic says there is actually an awesome array of predators and venomous critters that have earned Australia its fearsome reputation. Oh goodie. Topping out their list is the saltwater crocodile, Great white sharks, the stinging stonefish, southern blue-lined octopus, the inland taipan (the world’s most venomous snake), Sydney funnel-web and, most surprisingly, the honey bee. This article has been updated since its original publication. |