What Is The Most Deadly Animal?
I keep asking myself long before I knew it. You might think a shark, crocodile, or man-eating tiger holds the title of world's deadliest animal. But you'd be wrong. They can't hold a candle to the humble mosquito. Yes, the pest you swat when it buzzes about your head is responsible for an estimated 2 to 3 million deaths a year. These members of the fly family spread a number of diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile virus.
The Female of the Species
Only female mosquitoes bite. The reason? After a female mates, she needs protien from a blood meal to help her eggs develop. If she isn't developing eggs, she joins male mosquitoes in sipping on flower nectar.
How They Do It
Once a mosquito lands on her prey—that could be you—she pushes her proboscis, a long, slender tube, into the skin. Then, she locates a blood vessel and begins to suck up the blood. The blood goes up one of the two tubes in the proboscis. The other tube is used to inject the mosquito's saliva into the blood vessel. The saliva stops blood from clotting, making it flow more freely and allowing the insect enough time to drink her fill. The reason an itch develops after you've been bitten is because you're having an allergic reaction to mosquito's saliva.
Injecting Disease
Sometimes a mosquito transmits a disease-carrying organism with its bite. The deadliest of this organisms causes malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people each year, mostly in Africa. There is no cure for malaria, but doctors are working on a vaccine to protect people from getting it.
Biting Back Against Malaria
Malaria can be prevented and treated. Unfortunately, many nations don't have the funds to fight it. Nothing But Nets (NBN), created by the United Nations in 2006, hopes to change that by covering sleeping areas with nets. Hanging bed nets treated with insecticide is a simple yet effective way to stop mosquitoes from biting at night. So far, NBN has delivered more than 4 million nets to countries in Africa. Take that, mosquitoes!
Other TOP Killers
The box jellyfish is the world's most venomous, or poisonous, animal. Once stung, a victim has almost no chance of surviving unless treatment begins immediately.
Hippos are super aggressive, territorial, and not the least bit afraid of humans. The combination makes them the most deadly animal in Africa after mosquitoes.
White-tailed deer are gentle forest animals but more than 100 Americans die each year when their vehicles collide with them.
The reason why I hate mosquitoes so much.
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