Top 8 Most Dangerous Animal in the World
Top 8 Most Dangerous Animal in the World
Posted By- Tarun
8. Sea Wasp Box Jellyfish Lethally Venomous in the Sea
Everyone is always asking what animal
packs the deadliest venom in the world. Here, once and for all, are the two
answers. Sea life has abounded for about 3 billion years longer than life on
land, and the longer nature has to evolve its animals, the nastier, deadlier,
more perfect (see #4) they get. There are many species of box jellies, but
Chironex fleckeri, also called the sea wasp, is by far the most notorious.
It can weigh up to
4 and half pounds (2 kgs), with a bell that can reach the size of a basketball,
with 15 tentacles up to 10 feet long beneath. Its infamous venom was once
thought to glow in the dark, but cannot. Instead, the venom absorbs and
reflects the slightest sunlight into and out from the tentacles, giving the
jelly an ethereal glow even at twilight. Luckily, this enables you to see it
coming. It uses its venom to immobilize fish, and if you were to become wrapped
within the tentacles long enough, it would dissolve you.
At night, they
simply sit on the seafloor. During the day, it hunts for shrimp, minnows, and
other small fish. Sea turtles are able to eat box jellies and do frequently.
They have extremely thick skin that shields them from the stings. If you are
stung only slightly by a sea wasp jelly, you will not die, but you will wish
you would. The pain is described as “excruciating,” “exquisite,” “beyond
belief.” Children do not cry when they are stung. They scream. Lifeguards have
claimed that simply cutting off the limb that has been stung would hurt less
than leaving it attached.
If you were to be
wrapped up in the jelly’s tentacles, which happens quite often off the northern
coast of Australia, the cnidocytes in the venom would stop your heart in 3
minutes. That is 180 seconds. This assumes you do not drown before escaping the
sea, because the venom also shuts down the brain’s communication with the
muscles. The sea wasp has killed 63 people since 1884, most of them off
Australia. Its range extends at least into the Philippines, to Malaysia.
7. Inland Taipan Most Lethally Venomous on Land
The inland taipan must not be
confused with the coastal taipan or the central taipan, all three of which are
highly venomous. The inland taipan, also called the fierce snake (for its
venom), the small-scaled snake, and the two-step snake, averages 6 feet long,
with a maximum recorded of 8.2 feet. They are extremely shy and always try to
escape any large animal’s presence. It is only by cornering one that it bites.
The median lethal
dose of its venom is 30 micrograms per kilogram. It injects an average of 44
milligrams per bite, which is 44,000 micrograms. It can inject up to 110
milligrams. The snake has, however, never actually been known to kill a human.
This is because its habitat is in the center of the Australian outback, where
very few humans ever bother to venture, and also because you have to work very
hard to make it bite. Its diet consists entirely of rodents, and it does not
strike once and then wait for the prey to succumb. It bites up to 8 times to
hasten the process.
The venom itself is
comprised of taipoxin, named after the snake. This is one of the most powerful
natural toxins ever known, and stops the brain’s communication with the
muscles, causing death by asphyxia. Antivenin is 100% successful, provided that
you don’t have 200 miles to travel to a hospital. A bite on the calf, injecting
44 mgs, will drop a 200 pound human within 300 meters of running or 45 minutes
of resting pulse. Herpetologists have claimed that, provided it were
devenomized, the snake would make an outstanding aquarium pet given its docile
temperament.
6. The Human Only Evil Animal
Have you noticed that most history
books divide eras among major social, political, or disastrous events and that
the lion’s share of these are wars? In 200,000 years of the modern human species’
history (our personal history), the only thing we’ve been able to do
consistently well is kill each other. All animals fight, but only humans wage
war. We are the only species that has ever existed on Earth to have attempted
the elimination of entire species. And we are always getting better at it,
always pushing scientific knowledge, and almost always one of the first things
for which science is put to use is the invention of new methods of murder.
We do it so well
that we cannot even face ourselves when we consider it. We devise euphemisms,
especially in time of war: it’s not murder – its combat, or “defending our
freedom,” “target neutralization,” “justifiable homicide,” “soldiery,” “just
following orders.”
The human is the
only animal ever known to be capable of revenge, hatred, or sadism, and we are
intimate with all three. We kill for every reason.
Black powder was
originally invented by Chinese alchemists looking for the elixir of life, then
used as a means to set off fireworks for amusement. That didn’t last long. Now
it is more commonly called gunpowder.
The Wright Brothers
pioneered human aviation for the purpose of enabling aerial warfare, because in
their opinion this would make national invasions impossible, and would thus
negate all warfare in the first place. Wishful thinking. Tesla envisioned his
“death beam” for the same purpose. Einstein had no idea his Special Theory of
Relativity could be used to split atoms for the purpose of killing people. When
Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi explained to him what was being done at The
Manhattan Project, he burst into tears.
Consider all the
kindhearted, nonviolent people through the ages, Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin
Luther King. What do we do to them? Hate them, harm them, and kill them out of
spite.
The human is an
unnatural animal because of all this. It does not fit into any environment,
except perhaps the urban environment. We think of ourselves as predators,
usually with a sense of pride. Nevertheless, on even terms, the human would not
stand half a chance in a fight to the death with most of the other entries on
this list. But that only incites us to pick the fight, and we do so by the one
method in which we have no equals: thinking. Given the proper preparation
(typically guns), we are more than a match for any other organism on this list.
And that fills us with malicious and/or “sporting” glee.
5. The Mosquito Highest Death Toll
The mosquito is possibly responsible
for more deaths throughout history than any other macroscopic animal. They’re
easy to kill, but typically not until they bite you. Then you smack them but
the damage is done. Usually, all that happens is you itch for a little while.
This is because the mosquito’s saliva contains histamines, which irritate the
skin.
The reason they are
extremely dangerous is because they transmit diseases infectious to humans and
livestock, many of them fatal without treatment. Malaria is the most
well-known, which can kill 20% of the time in severe cases, even with
treatment. They also transmit West Nile Virus, lymphatic filariasis
(roundworms), tularemia, dengue fever, yellow fever, and others. All of these
can kill.
In addition to the
lethal diseases they carry, mosquitoes can kill on their own. They are feared
throughout the Australian outback (just one more reason not to go there) and
the southern Sahara, where shallow deluges provide them excellent breeding in
the water. When the larvae hatch, they attack in swarms of over 1 billion
insects, descending on cows and camels and draining them of blood within 10
minutes.
4. The Shark Perfect Killing Machine
As mentioned in #8, nature has
perfected ocean life. The shark has zero natural predators, except perhaps
larger sharks. The largest is the whale shark, but it eats small fish,
plankton, and krill. The largest macro predatory shark is the one Steven Spielberg
made permanently infamous in “Jaws,” the Great White. In that film, the shark
is summed up by Richard Dreyfuss, “All it does is swim, and eat, and make
little sharks.” It can reach over 20 feet long, easily weigh 2.5 tons, and
still swim 35 feet per second. Michael Phelps set the world record of 100
meters in freestyle at 47.82 seconds. This works out to about 4.7 miles per
hour. The Great White can swim 25 miles per hour.
All sharks have a
superlative sense of smell to make up for their bad eyesight. Any species can
smell a drop of blood in an Olympic swimming pool. They can smell a bleeding
swimmer from 5 miles, and with a single bite can tear off 31 lbs of flesh. In
theory, sharks are always hungry, and a 20 foot specimen can bite with 4,000
pounds of force, which is more powerful than the impact of a .375 H & H
Magnum rifle round.
The shark’s most
incredible, virtually X-Men ability is called electroreception. They have
organs in their heads called Ampullae of Lorenzini. Every time any animal
moves, it generates a very slight electrical field, and sharks can actually
sense this electricity. Thus a person treading water looks like lightning to a
shark. A great white can detect half a billionth of a single volt. If it is
within 100 meters, it can detect the voltage of your heartbeat.
3. Cape Buffalo Most Unpredictable
The cape buffalo is by far the most
dangerous game animal on Earth. It is sufficiently thick-skinned to require an
elephant rifle, and is the animal most responsible for the introduction of
double-barreled rifles. A double-barreled rifle offers the hunter an immediate
follow-up shot to finish a wounded animal, and cape buffaloes can be counted on
to withstand the first shot, even if they are struck in the heart, and still
charge. The .585 Nyati caliber was invented for use against this animal. Nyati
is Swahili for Cape Buffalo.
You may think
touring Africa’s grasslands in a safari jeep is safe, and were it not for the
Cape Buffalo, you would be fairly correct. They may charge without any
provocation at all, and they overturn jeeps, trucks, and vans by ramming them
headfirst. A 2,000 lb male can run 40 miles an hour for more than 100 meters.
Some professional hunting guides refuse to hunt them, for fear the paying
hunter will miss. The cape buffalo gores and tramples to death over 200 people
every year, more kills, possibly, than any other African animal.
2. Clostridium
Botulinum Most Toxic Animal on Earth
One teaspoon of this bacterium, properly distributed, could kill
every single human being in the United States. About 9 lbs (4 kgs) could kill
every human in the world. Like the venom of #7, botulinum is a neurotoxin,
stopping communication between the brain and the muscles, resulting in
paralysis of the diaphragm, then asphyxia.
Botulinum is found in the soil of every continent and ecosystem on
Earth, from the Sahara Desert to Antarctica. It is found in soil brought up
from the ocean floor. It requires absolutely perfect conditions in order to
become active and thus dangerous. You would not be able to contract the toxin
by eating dirt, since your digestive juices are too acidic to allow the
bacterium to grow and produce the toxin.
But the spores are extraordinarily difficult to kill, able to
survive in boiling water for 10 minutes. If you were to can food without
boiling it (cold canning), airborne spores may enter the oxygen-free
environment of the food and grow very quickly. Upon eating the food, the toxins
would be present in your body immediately, and eating only a nibble of a green
bean is more than sufficient to kill you within a day. No animal is known to
have an immunity to botulinum. A mere 1 nanogram per kilogram dose will kill
any living organism on the planet. An elephant weighing 5,454 kgs (12,000 lbs)
would die in less than 3 days after consuming 5,454 ngs of botulinum toxin.
This is equal to 0.005454 milligrams.
1. Siafu Ants Strength in Numbers
Let’s face it.
Africa is an extremely dangerous place and anything can die there very easily.
Siafu ants are also called driver ants, safari ants, and army ants. They live
primarily in central and east Africa, both in jungle and on savanna. They have
no eyes. They communicate and navigate by smelling pheromones, and every few
years a colony of 50,000,000 will decide to pick up and move in search of more
fruitful hunting grounds.
When
they move, they form columns on the ground, with the smaller worker ants inside
a tunnel formed by the larger soldier or guard ants. The ants average about an
inch long, with the winged males the largest ant known at over 2 inches. They
have venom and can sting with their abdomens, but it is insufficient to kill
large animals. Instead, they rely on their bite. They have mandibles strong
enough to cut through rhinoceros hide. And when the colony relocates, every
animal in the entire area of many square miles, including the honey badger,
leaves and may not return for weeks.
If
one ant attacked you, you could stomp it or pick it off you. But ants don’t
play fair. If you come within 25 meters of a colony on the move in column
formation, they will smell you and come running to defend themselves. The bite
is severely painful and once blood is drawn, your only defense is to run for
your life. Attacking the ants is useless. A flamethrower might work but the
ants do not know the use of fear and will either run across fiery ground to get
at you, or wait until the fire dies away.
They
do not run fast and are easy to avoid, provided you are able to get away. They
are able to overpower any known animal, having brought down sick or injured
elephants that could not escape. They have killed many people over the
centuries, always infants or the injured, those who are unable to run. Once
they are upon you, there is no easy way to get them off. Other ants will let go
if you submerge in water. Siafu ants will hold their breath and bite for 3
minutes under water. A colony can strip an elephant to the bone in a month, and
during that time nothing else except bacteria can approach the carcass.
Vultures land on it and immediately fly away kicking ants off their feet.
They
are used as natural stitches by the indigenous peoples. A single ant is picked
up and allowed to bite on either side of a wound, and then the body is pinched
off, leaving the head with jaws locked shut. They have venomous stings but
hardly ever use them. They kill prey such as grasshoppers and small rodents
simply by biting them to death. What they do is overwhelm any animal they can
find and bite until the animal is incapacitated by agony. Smaller animals like
insects are cut to pieces. The ants will enter the mouth of a larger animal and
invade the lungs, biting the whole way, causing death by asphyxia.