Chapter 1


The World's Deadliest Animal


by Surac


Can you name the world's deadliest animal? Meaning, the animal which, both annually, and historically, has accounted for the most human deaths?


Okay, if you just said “sharks”, you have been watching way too much television...at the very least, consider changing channels.


We seem to be pretty good at killing each other, and some wars have racked up casualties in the millions. Humans seem to excel at killing everything around them as well, so perhaps the deadliest animal is mankind.


Not a bad guess.


Bacteria and viruses are animals, and have killed lots of people. During historical plague periods, millions died. Since there are countless types of bacteria and viruses, we could consider them by individual type, or lump them all together; either way, the body count from death by viral or bacterial infection is likely to be quite larger than we can easily count. So, bacteria and viruses as the world's deadliest animal is a pretty good guess.


Pretty good, but wrong.


The deadliest animal in the world, both historically, and this very day, is the mosquito. Technically, the bite of a mosquito in itself does little more than leave an annoying red bump that itches like mad—a scenario we are all familiar with. The problem with mosquitoes is that they turn out to be the perfect vector to enable parasites and pathogens to spread, survive, and multiply. The mosquitoes provide this service to the parasites and pathogens unwittingly—the mosquitoes themselves are used by the parasites to move from one victim to the next. This doesn't make the mosquito entirely blameless—we'd still swat them for trying to suck blood out of our bodies. For the purposes of this article and any that follow, when I speak of the evils of the mosquito, it it technically its employment as a carrier that makes it a killer. Although it is possible to die from blood loss from multiple mosquito bites, reports of human deaths from that cause are few. More commonly, there are reports of animals in the northern tundra—specifically, caribou, being driven to their deaths by clouds of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes can literally run them to ground and they die from exhaustion, or, if there is a body of water nearby, the animal will plunge into it in terror, as it tries to escape the swarm. Even then, the mosquitoes will cluster on the animal's nose, and drownings are common. So technically, this might not be death by mosquito, but they certainly had a hand in it. ( a wing in it?)


A short, incomplete list of diseases carried and spread by mosquitoes is as follows:


  1. Malaria, of which there are several types, varying from a mild type, which causes lethargy and weakness, and recurs periodically for the rest of your life, to a killer type which few people survive—it actually coagulates your blood into a black goo. Malaria alone kills around 800,000 people each year. Those who survive an attack of malaria may be crippled in some way for the rest of their lives.

  1. Yellow Fever, also called “Black Vomit”. Here is a father's description of his daughter's death: (skip this part if you are squeamish) “Lucille died at ten o'clock Tuesday night, after such suffering as I hope never again to witness...The poor girl's screams might be heard for half a square at times and I had to exert my utmost strength to hold her in bed. Jaundice was marked—the skin being a bright yellow hue; tongue and lips dark, cracked and blood oozing from the mouth and nose...to me the most terrifying feature was the black vomit which I never before witnessed. By Tuesday it was black as ink and would be ejected with terrific force. I had my face and hands spattered but had to stand by and hold her. Well, it is too terrible to write any more about it.” 1 If you think; “This can't happen here”, Lucille and her father lived in Memphis, Tennessee.

  1. Dengue Fever, also called “break bone fever”, in which the pain is so acute, and the convulsions so great that—well, you get the idea.

  1. Encephalitis—inflammation of the brain and surrounding membrane. Those who survive can be subject to permanent dementia.

  1. Elephantiasis—really called filariasis, and is an infection of the human body by the filaria worm. The worm multiplies until globs of worms block your lymph nodes, causing your body to swell and your skin to stretch until your form is unrecognizable as that of a human.

  1. Chikungunya Fever—in 2005-6 an outbreak on Reunion Island sickened 250,000 and killed 250.

  1. Rift Valley Fever, which can kill a perfectly healthy adult in a few days, as blood spews from every orifice.

In the news, we have:

  1. West Nile Virus, and

  1. Zika

You get the idea. And if you think that these terrible diseases are not our problem here in the U.S., they once were, and only a very determined, national, federally run program wiped them out. DDT was used extensively against mosquitoes, (it proved ineffective), as was kerosene (effective, but impractical and polluting), among other things. International travel and trade has brought these diseases back to us. West Nile and Zika are only the beginning.


In addition, even though we frequently act like we are the only species on the planet, we are not. It turns out that mosquitoes will attack anything that produces heat and carbon dioxide. This includes your dog, which can contact heartworm from a mosquito bite. Many horses have died here in the U.S. from Equine Encephalitis, carried by a mosquito. When West Nile Virus first appeared on our shores, thousands of birds, especially the larger ones, were infected and died from it. Entire troops of monkeys have been killed by one mosquito borne parasite or another; caribou are driven to their deaths; allegedly, mosquitoes will even attack frogs. If nothing else, they torment anything that moves.


Remember the book and movie “Jurassic Park”? The dinosaurs were cloned from dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes embalmed in amber. If this were true, even dinosaurs were plagued with mosquitoes. We have no idea, worldwide, how many animals, wild or domesticated, succumb to mosquito bites.


It's enough to make you want to hide inside. Maybe we could all watch “Shark Week”.


But then, did I mention that there is something called “the house mosquito”?


1 Margaret Humphreys, “Yellow Fever and the South”, 1992