Sharks are wimps, compared to mosquitoes

Bill Gates asks in his blog — GatesNotes — what would you say is the most dangerous animal on Earth? Sharks? Snakes? Humans?

He writes: Of course the answer depends on how you define dangerous. Personally I’ve had a thing about sharks since the first time I saw Jaws. But if you’re judging by how many people are killed by an animal every year, then the answer isn’t any of the above. It’s mosquitoes.

When it comes to killing humans, no other animal even comes close. What makes mosquitoes so dangerous? Despite their innocuous-sounding name—Spanish for “little fly”— they carry devastating diseases.

The worst is malaria, which kills more than 600,000 people every year; another 200 million cases incapacitate people for days at a time. It threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually. Other mosquito-borne diseases include dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year and in the US they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year. Mosquitoes kill 50,000 times as many people, but if there’s a TV channel that features Mosquito Week, I haven’t heard about it.

Here is a list from the fatalities data of 2015:

Mosquitoes: 830,000

Humans: 580,000

Snakes: 60,000

Sandflies: 24.200

Dogs: 17,400

Kissing Bugs: 8,000

Freshwater snails: 4,400

Scorpions: 3,500

Tsetse flies: 3,500

Roundworms: 2,700

Tapeworms: 1,600

Crocodile: 1,000

Hippopotamus: 500

Lion: 100

Elephants: 100

Bees: 60

Tigers: 50

Jellyfish: 40

Wolves: 10

Sharks: 6