Deadliest Insects in the World ~ WildLife-TK

1. Mosquito

Mosquitoes kill almost three-quarters of a million people every year.

The deadliest insect is, in fact, the deadliest critter in the entire animal kingdom. It is the humble mosquito, which kills more than 700,000 people every year. Skeeters are vectors for a host of nasty diseases, including malaria, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya, and lymphatic filariasis. Malaria is the big one: In 2017, roughly 435,000 people died of the disease worldwide. That’s one person every 30 seconds. Mosquitoes have a special organ, the maxillary palp, which detects CO2 released from our breath and guides them to us, where they consume three times their own weight in blood. Mosquitoes are known to prefer beer drinkers, probably because drinking a beer increases the ethanol content in your sweat. Ethanol turns mosquitoes on. Plus, all booze increases your body temperature, which makes you easier for a mosquito to find. People of greater body mass attract more bugs for the same reason. Mosquitoes also prefer people with O type blood. Nobody knows exactly why, but the assumption is that O-blood-type people smell better, to mosquitoes at least, than everybody else.

2. Kissing Bug

The 130-odd members of the subfamily Triatominae are also known as kissing bugs or vampire bugs for their tendency to bite humans around the soft tissue of the mouth. The insects are found in 28 states in the U.S. However, the ones here rarely carry Chagas disease, and the cases in the U.S. are thought to have originated in Central America, where it is endemic. Chagas kills about 12,000 people annually worldwide. Victims are typically asymptomatic for four to eight weeks. Even in the chronic phases, most people show few symptoms, but 45 percent develop heart disease 10 to 30 years after the initial infection, and this can lead to heart failure.

3. Tsetse Fly

Native to tropical Africa, these big, biting flies spread the parasitic infection that causes African sleeping sickness, a disease that is 100 percent fatal without treatment, and the treatment itself is notoriously difficult. There are drugs, but they must be administered with great care, and parasite resistance to them is always a risk. If bitten by an infected tsetse fly, you develop confusion, poor coordination, numbness, and difficulty sleeping. Then you die, most likely. Because the disease is so fatal, recent mitigation efforts have focused on controlling the bugs themselves, which has reduced the number of cases exponentially. In years past, African sleeping sickness was responsible for killing as many as half a million people every year by some estimates. In 2015, fatal cases were estimated at 3,500.

4. Bees

African honey bees are extremely aggressive.

Bees were responsible for the deaths of 89 Americans in 2017, according to the CDC. Anaphylactic shock is the killer, and about 80 percent of those who die are male. While the sting of any type of bee, hornet, or wasp can induce an allergic reaction, the critter you hear about most these days is the “murder hornet,” aka the Asian or Japanese giant hornet—the world’s largest, measuring 1 ⅝ inches long, with a wingspan up to 3 inches. The stinger alone is ¼ inch. In some parts of Japan, the fried larvae are considered a delicacy. In others, adults are fried on skewers, tails and all, until crunchy and eaten. Yum! The Japanese giant hornet was spotted in the Pacific Northwest in 2019, which means we could eat them too if we wanted.

The other big-name bee in this category is the so-called “killer bee,” a term coined by the media to hype the African or Africanized honey bee, which is responsible for one or two deaths a year worldwide. The sting of this bee is no worse than that of most other honey bees. What’s different is that Africanized honey bees are much more defensive and sting in proportionally higher numbers—like 10 times more—than other bees. They will chase a person a quarter mile and have killed horses. In the U.S., they are now present in Florida, Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, and southern California.

5. Indian Red Scorpion

There are about 1,500 species of scorpions, of which only a few dozen are venomous. The Indian red is the most lethal of all; in some parts of the world, up to 40 percent of stung victims succumb. This scorpion is a major problem in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, for example, because it is frequently found around human habitations where barefooted children play. Scorpions are shy, nocturnal arachnids but will sting when threatened. Although less than 3 inches long, the India red packs a potent venom, which results in severe pain, vomiting, sweating, breathlessness, and alternating high and low blood pressure and heart rate. The venom targets the lungs and heart and can cause death from pulmonary edema. Antivenom has little effect on the bite, although the blood pressure medication Parazosin has been shown to reduce the mortality rate to less than 4 percent. Despite this, the Indian reds are often kept as pets in India. Maybe because, like most scorpions, they glow under a black light.