11 ms·

The Deadliest Animal in the World

• bws99 12y ago
  Not seeing domestic cats on this list, though I suppose they only have murderous intentions and are too fluffy to actually execute on them.
  • cperciva 12y ago
    Cats carry Toxoplasma gondii, which is estimated to cause 750 deaths each year in the US alone. Around the world it's probably many times that number -- making Felis domesticus responsible (albeit indirectly) for more deaths than lions, elephants, hippopotamuses, and crocodiles combined.
    • Dirlewanger 12y ago
      Yup, which humans can pick up if they train their cat to use the same toilet as they do. Incredibly unsanitary. People and animals have separate shit receptacles for a reason.
    • yread 12y ago
      It also influences human behaviour [1] which is probably why the grandparent's post is so massively downvoted ;) It can also be deadly when it doesn't kill you "The difference in seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis in these 2 samples suggests that Toxoplasma-infected subjects have a 2.65 times higher risk of traffic accidents than Toxoplasma-free subjects" EDIT: it also suggests an explanation: "the effects of T. gondii are best explained in evolutionary terms by the manipulation hypothesis, ie, the parasite changes the behavior of the rodent in such a way as to increase the chances of the parasite's getting into a feline and completing its life cycle." [1] http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/757.full http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3...
      • dm2 12y ago
        Yep, cat people hate when you talk about their beloved pets. I've seen friends parents not wash their hands after playing with cats, after I suggest that they should they think I'm crazy for saying the phrase "brain parasite", even after showing wikipedia articles and suggesting that they look it up themselves. Crazy cat ladies are undoubtedly infected with the parasite. There needs to be more public awareness about this. Change your cat's litter-box daily, wash your hands after touching a cat (kittens specifically), be very cautious of outdoor cats, never handle a cat while pregnant or if you have a compromised immune system. Also wash vegetables and cook meat thoroughly. Even more shocking is the percentage of the human population that is infected, over 30%!
        • PhasmaFelis 12y ago
          In case you're wondering, I downvoted you for (a) getting needlessly personal and (b) more importantly, wildly overstating the very minor role of cats in spreading toxoplasma, relative to unwashed vegetables and undercooked meat. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_factors_for_human_infection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_factors_...: "Numerous studies have shown living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondii infection, though living with several kittens has some significance." It's fine if you don't like cats, but don't try to turn it into a moral crusade. Oh, yeah: the research that suggests a connection between toxoplasma and feelings about cats shows that it makes men like cats more and women like them less. Your "crazy cat lady" thing has no basis in fact.
          • upquark 12y ago
            What about this? http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html Animal-to-human (zoonotic) transmission section: "Cats play an important role in the spread of toxoplasmosis"
          • dm2 12y ago
            "Because T. gondii can sexually reproduce only within cats, they are defined as the definitive host of T. gondii." No cats, no toxoplasma gondii brain parasite. I have nothing against cats, but the phrase "brain parasite" and the fact that 30+% of the worlds human population are infected scares the shit out of me. "As of 2013, at least 38 studies have found a positive correlation between T. gondii antibody titers and schizophrenia." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Schizophrenia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Schizophrenia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Cat_Lady_Syndrome#Society_and_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Cat_Lady_Syndrome#Society...
    • morsch 12y ago
      That's it, I'm getting rid of my pet cat in favor of a hippopotamus. Safety first.
      • logicchains 12y ago
        I bet that'd also significantly reduce your risk of burglary or home invasion.
      • dm2 12y ago
        I'd be willing to bet that pet hippopotamuses are more likely to kill their owners than pet cats. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/11/pet-hippo-kills-its-owner/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/11/pet-hippo-kil...
        • Argorak 12y ago
          Hippos are very aggressive and territorial. Also, they are surprisingly fast, especially in water. Many wild animals, even predators, won't move towards you unless you come real close. Hippos move towards you even if you just pass by the waterline of the sea that they are in. Also, Hippos don't kill by biting you. They drown you by dragging you underwater - it's not that they misjudge their force. Another problem is that they come out at night and like warm underground - streets for example. When I was in Africa last time, there was a horrible street accident with 17 dead as a pickup hit a hippo standing on the road at night. Grey, behind a corner -> bang. What makes Hippos so dangerous to humans is they we are misjudging them as tame, slow creatures that mind their own thing.
      • bitJericho 12y ago
        Reminds me of: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      • cm2012 12y ago
        Please don't spread misinformation. Read my other post, the wiki on toxoplasmosis, or many other reliable sources. Having a pet cat does not increase your chance of toxoplasmosis.
        • riggins 12y ago
          Read my other post, the wiki on toxoplasmosis There should be some sort of Goodwin's law wrt using Wikipedia as your evidence.
        • lotsofmangos 12y ago
          Apparently it can do; In this survey, 998 children and adolescents between 7 months and 17 years of age who attended a hospital diagnostic center in the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, for routine evaluation were tested for Toxoplasma gondii antibody. The 5.2% prevalence rate of antibody for children living in the outlying rural areas was significantly higher than the 1.1% rate among the urban children (P = .0006). Seroprevalence increased with age for both rural and urban children. Cat ownership was associated with antibodies to Toxoplasma among rural children but not urban children. Rural children who lived in a house with more than one cat were two times more likely to be infected than children who had one cat and three times more likely to be infected than children with no cats. The geometric mean titer was also significantly higher among the rural children with more than one cat, 1:152, than rural children with one or no cats, 1:63 (P = .02). In light of these findings for children and adolescents, the association of Toxoplasma infection with cat ownership needs to be thoroughly evaluated among pregnant women in rural areas. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1594371 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1594371
          • riggins 12y ago
            I really hope you're still reading this thread. This study says that owning a cat makes if more likely to have Toxo. Wikipedia, which the grandparent node quotes, said the opposite. In fact, Wikipedia, correctly links to the study and then gives a summary that's 100% opposite of the actual findings. numerous studies have shown living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondiiinfection,[18][40][46]
    • cm2012 12y ago
      The vast, vast majority of toxoplasma occurs in 3rd world countries, and living with a cat has been shown not to increase chance of catching it at all. Wiki: The following have been identified as being risk factors for T. gondii infection:Exposure to or consumption of raw or undercooked meat[18][39][40][41]Drinking unpasteurized goat milk[39]Contact with soil[7][40]Eating unwashed raw vegetables or fruits[18]Cleaning cat litter boxes[18]Sewage has been identified as a carriage medium for the organism.[42][43][44][45]Numerous studies have shown living in a household with a cat is not a significant risk factor for T. gondiiinfection,[18][40][46] though living with several kittens has some significance.[47]
      • dm2 12y ago
        While that's technically true (some countries have numbers as high as 80% infection rates), over 16% of the US human population is infected. That's a very large amount when talking about a brain parasite. http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/ http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/ An adult cat might not have a high risk of spreading the parasite but a kitten is a major risk of infection and dropping the parasites in the owners home.
      • facepalm 12y ago
        "vast majority of toxoplasma occurs in 3rd world countries" Doesn't that hold for everything that happens to anyone, simply because much, much more people live in 3rd world countries? I seem to have read that 70% of french people are infected, because they like raw meat so much.
      • jtheory 12y ago
        > vast, vast majority of toxoplasma occurs in 3rd world countries Well. I'm in France, which has a seriously high rate of infection; something around 50%. >living with a cat has been shown not to increase chance of catching it at all. But what's in the list of risk factors just below that? > Contact with soil ... Cleaning cat litter boxes So, living with a cat is fine as long as someone else changes its litter box, and you stay away from any soil into which your cat might potentially defecate.
    • tokenadult 12y ago
      You should have done more looking up about toxoplasmosis before starting this subthread. Toxoplasmosis is mostly a food-borne illness, worldwide, and especially in the United States is spread mostly by undercooked food.[1] In any event, the great majority of people infected with this parasite have no symptoms from the infection. (This is true of many infectious diseases; human beings have a well adapted immune system with a deep evolutionary history now that we and our ancestors have been living for millions of years in a world filled with other organisms. Malaria deserves special attention because the parasite is especially harmful to human beings.) [1] http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html
      • cperciva 12y ago
        Food-borne, yes; but doesn't Toxoplasma gondii need to pass through a cat before it gets into the food?
  • ogig 12y ago
    They are still in planing phase, keep vigilant.
  • mda 12y ago
    Interestingly, cats are responsible for toxoplasmosis and it could be fatal in some cases. They also may carry rabies. I am pretty sure cats killed more people than sharks.
  • egeozcan 12y ago
    I guess they are busy with their plans for destroying the Earth: http://www.buzzfeed.com/smbc/cat-photo-industry http://www.buzzfeed.com/smbc/cat-photo-industry What surprised me most is learning that there is a creature which is capable of killing more humans than humans themselves.
  • norswap 12y ago
    They're plotting: http://theoatmeal.com/misc/frame/cat_kill http://theoatmeal.com/misc/frame/cat_kill
• ogig 12y ago
  > What makes mosquitoes so dangerous? Despite their innocuous-sounding name—Spanish for “little fly”—they carry devastating diseases. Spanish for "little fly" could be "mosquita", a diminutive of "mosca" (fly). Mosquito is the spanish term for mosquito. While mosquito and mosca share the same latin origin "musca" i dont think any spanish speaker will understand mosquito as little fly. Just a nitpick in case you were going to amaze someone with magazine learned spanish terms.
  • ibmthrowaway218 12y ago
    The diminutive can be -ita or -ito depending on gender. They may understand it as "mosquito" rather than "little fly" but that is a valid literal translation, just like "gatito" is "kitten" but the literal translation would be diminutive-of-cat -> "little cat".
    • ogig 12y ago
      Mosca has no male form, it would be a female mosca, or a male mosca. That's probably the origin of the mistake with the article. While the gatito example is ok, there is no mosco for mosca.
      • vibragiel 12y ago
        But it has a male form: mosco. From which "mosquito" comes by diminutivization. No mistake in the article.
        • oscardelben 12y ago
          Depends on the language I guess? In italian we only use mosca.
      • felideon 12y ago
        Using your own dictionary: http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=mosquito http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=mosquito (Del dim. de mosco) Outside of your country, mosco is definitely used.
• davidw 12y ago
  In a list that's supposed to point out "unexpected" killers, snakes are, interestingly, far and away the deadliest of the animals you'd actually think of when someone says "dangerous animals".
• Aardwolf 12y ago
  Wow, 50,000 snake deaths per year! Living in Europe, I've never seen snakes except in a zoo. How do you avoid them in a country with snakes? Can they pop up anywhere out of nowhere?
  • Nux 12y ago
    You should go in the country side more, there's loads of snakes in Europe in the wild, though not Boas or Pythons.
    • masklinn 12y ago
      Even in the countryside, it's rare to see snakes unless you're actively looking for them. And the few somewhat dangerous ones (mostly the common adder) is fairly small and shy, not aggressive, and very rarely dangerous.
  • Synaesthesia 12y ago
    Really the biggest risk is if you're walking in the veld and step on one accidentally, they are not aggressive animals that seek confrontation with humans. Unfortunately they hide themselves very well and are entirely motionless when resting so it's easy to accidentally step on. A snakebite is not usually deadly. Most deaths occur in poor parts of Africa where people do not get appropriate treatment.
  • atmosx 12y ago
    In Greece we have plenty, in the countryside and in the Islands. If you go to Ithaca for example, you'll come across many snakes in June-August if you visit the villages on the hills. You avoid them by learning to live with them. Most snakes are afraid of human. Some are not poisonous. People who live in the specific knows what's dangerous and what's not, where they live what to do and how to react.
  • oska 12y ago
    It's mostly that the snakes avoid you. Snakes don't see humans as food and so mostly get out of the way when humans approach. In Australia, where I live, it's said that even in the suburbs there will be a snake living somewhere close by. But most people will rarely ever see a snake and most snake bites are from people being foolish, like trying to kill a cornered snake. Only four to six Australians suffer a fatal snake bite each year, and this is with our famous collection of highly venomous snakes [1]. I understand that fatal snake bites are much more common in India though, and I guess that's from population pressure and many more Indians living a rural life. [1] http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2012/07/australias-10-most-dangerous-snakes http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-enviro...
• Synaesthesia 12y ago
  Besides the lethality of the disease, we must consider how debilitating it is. Read what it's like to have Malaria. http://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-Malaria-Feels-Like-Mosquito-Week http://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-Malaria-Feels-Like-Mos... Imagine feeling like that and trying to go to school, work, or take care of your family. It would be impossible. It's undoubtedly contributed to the lack of development in most of Africa.
  • tokenadult 12y ago
    THANK YOU for posting a substantive comment on this article that links to other information on the same topic. Too many of the other comments in this thread are dragging down the level of discourse here on Hacker News. I'll link to some World Health Organization information about malaria[1] here to do my part to make the conversation informative and thoughtful. The malaria parasite microorganism, one of the species of the Plasmodium genus of protozoa,[2] is also being targeted directly both for vaccine prevention and for drug treatment of malaria, but part of the Plasmodium life cycle is obligatorily in living mosquitoes, so to kill mosquitoes is to reduce the load of the parasite and its risk to human populations. This fact (and the fact that mosquitoes transmit other dangerous diseases, including the fatal West Nile virus[3] where I live) is why understanding mosquito control better will be helpful to the world. Indeed, scientists who have considered the issue have been reported to say that a world without mosquitoes at all would be a fine world.[4] [1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/ [2] http://eol.org/pages/10408873/overview http://eol.org/pages/10408873/overview [3] http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/index.html http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/index.html [4] http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
  • Retric 12y ago
    I suspect this as a lot to do with why tropical countries are less prosperous despite all the benefits of living in the tropics. Still, I find it somewhat disingenuous to downplay the ~1,200,000 vehicle related deaths as somehow not caused by people.
    • 12y ago
• TomGullen 12y ago
  I think it'd be interesting to see these weighted by animal populations
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• atmosx 12y ago
  "[...] malaria [...] threatens half of the world’s population and causes billions of dollars in lost productivity annually." billions of dollars in lost productivity?!?!? NOTE: Not in healthcare. Because there's no health-care Central Africa where malaria does the biggest damage. It causes billions of dollars in lost productivity. Now we need to cure it.
• indralukmana 12y ago
  So, in indonesia (bill gates recently came here) mosquitos really thrive in all regions. One of the most common and dangerous disease caused by them are (known locally as) "Demam Berdarah" with the literal translation is "Bloody Fever", i don't know if it is the same with the "dengue fever" stated in the article (i have a bad English). This disease is very dangerous especially in rainy season, when there are very many water puddle everywhere and the mosquitos breed. Sometimes hospitals have a very tough time here when the patients start flowing in a very large volumes. So i am grateful to bill gates for giving a grant for solving this problem
  • masklinn 12y ago
    > One of the most common and dangerous disease caused by them are (known locally as) "Demam Berdarah" with the literal translation is "Bloody Fever", i don't know if it is the same with the "dengue fever" stated in the article (i have a bad English) Using wikipedia, the Indonesian "Demam Berdarah" article is linked to the English "Denge Fever" article, so probably.
    • soneca 12y ago
      also, in Brazil we call Dengue and the main prevention tactic is indeed to eliminate the "water puddle everywhere" so the mosquitoes can't breed. So, very probably the same.
      • indralukmana 12y ago
        Yeah, every rainy season there are some kind of campaigns here to bury or burn garbages, regularly clean or change water containers, etc. To minimize the breeding grounds for the mosquitos.
    • brazzy 12y ago
      There is a whole group of such illnesses; the general term is haemorrhagic fever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemorrhagic_fever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemorrhagic_fever
    • 12y ago
• cloudhead 12y ago
  Pretty misleading I'd say.. Malaria kills people, not mosquitos, mosquitos have nothing to do with Malaria. Would be like saying rats are deadly because they carried the plague. Also I interact with humans every day and I'm still alive. I understand where it's coming from, but it's more of a historical post-factum analysis rather than a indication of which animals you should stay away from.
  • frozenport 12y ago
    >>mosquitos have nothing to do with Malaria ? If you get rid of the mosquitos you get rid of most of Malaria.
    • cloudhead 12y ago
      Yes, and if you get rid of humans, you get rid of wars, but the majority of humans don't wage war today.
  • S_A_P 12y ago
    That is the same as saying its not the snake that kills you its the poison. Mosquitos do have something to do with Malaria as they carry it, willingly or not. I live in Houston where there are plenty of mosquitos and plenty of mosquito related illnesses/Deaths each year.(West Nile, Bird Flu) Mosquitos are a serious nuisance, and to top it off I am pretty allergic to the bites, mine swell up and itch pretty severely. I would love to see more research put into controlling these things. Regardless of the fact that they are unwitting carriers of Malaria and other disease, they deserve more attention for eradication. Hopefully in a way that doesn't involve blanketing an area with pesticide...
    • cloudhead 12y ago
      Well, the difference is Malaria is a kind of living being in itself, it uses mosquitos to spread. On the other hand, poison is produced by the snake, and the snake uses it to survive.
  • PhasmaFelis 12y ago
• Zarkonnen 12y ago
  Maxing out my pedantry score, the actual answer is "humans" followed by "snakes". Mosquitos themselves are not dangerous, and malaria parasites are not animals.
  • r0h1n 12y ago
    Okay, I'll bite and try to outmax your pedantry: If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Alternately, if I take your logic that "mosquitoes themselves are not dangerous", why can I not extend that to humans and say human beings themselves are not dangerous?
    • masklinn 12y ago
      > If a mosquito bite can infect and kill, why isn't a mosquito dangerous? Because it's not the mosquito itself doing that (as opposed to, say, a rattlesnake), it's a parasite hitching a ride on an "innocent" (of that anyway) mosquito. Much like e.g. bats and henipaviruses, bats are a resevoir species but nobody in their right mind would say that Mark Preston was killed by a fruitbat.
      • TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Is there a difference though? A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. The snake kills in the same way the mosquito does. The snake's poison kills in the same way malaria parasites do. Both statements are true, they're just operating on different abstraction levels.
        • masklinn 12y ago
          > Is there a difference though? Yes. > A snake is a vehicle for delivering poison, which is a chemical compound disrupting your biological machinery. The poison is the snake's own weapon and defence, not a hitch-hiker, and poison delivery is part of a snake's normal bite process (if the snake is poisonous). > A mosquito is a vehicle for delivering pieces of biological machinery that disrupt your own biological machinery. No, the mosquito itself delivers some saliva and draws blood, that somebody else takes advantage of this can hardly be ascribed to the mosquito's fault. Again, compare to other reservoirs, or to a dog giving you rabies. The dog didn't kill you, rabies did, the dog was the unwitting carrier of the infection rabies is not a weaponised dog secretion.
• frozenport 12y ago
  How about a person with a car? `Approximately 1.24 million deaths occurred on the world’s roads in 2010` WHO
  • theandrewbailey 12y ago
    Also: deer.
    • jowiar 12y ago
      And moose, for our hockey-playing friends.
• radisb 12y ago
  I would like to see the exact same graph but having instead as value the humans killed per unit of the animal. I doubt if the mosquito would be on top.
• josefresco 12y ago
  What about a horse? I seem to remember reading somewhere that they caused more human injuries and deaths than many other "dangerous" animals.... or maybe I'm remembering wrong.
  • anotherevan 12y ago
    and vending machines.
• jtheory 12y ago
  Last month I spent 2 weeks in Rwanda with my wife & daughters, visiting two friends who have been there for about a year. One of them has also spent a lot of time in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa. Rwanda is land-locked and largely high-altitude, so malaria is not nearly so prevalent there, but it's still around. It's already preventable -- we came with a sufficient supply of antimalarial pills, but they're so expensive it's obviously not a solution. We got yellow fever vaccinations before coming -- that was a no-brainer -- and we actively avoided mosquito bites, esp. for the little ones. My friend who has traveled widely in Africa doesn't take anti-malarials -- too pricey -- has gotten malaria, once, and it put him in the hospital for a couple of days. He says many of the people he knows have had it, multiple times -- it's just a fact of life, and it sucks, but (probably) you'll live, and then have some protection against getting it again. Gates talks about it as being debilitating -- apparently it's not always so bad, if you've had it before (and people talk about having "a touch of the malaria"!), but generally he's on the mark about the costs.
  • peterwwillis 12y ago
    The most common victims of diseases like malaria in countries without access to basic medical resources is children and the elderly. Most of the people who die from malaria are under 5 years old. Out of the 207 million people who got malaria in 2012, only 0.3% of those people died. In contrast, diarrhea kills more children under five each year (760,000) than all of the people killed by malaria each year. But it's much harder to combat diarrhea because of both the varied nature of its cause/transmission and a lack of clean drinking water. (It is comparatively much easier to treat/prevent malaria than it is diarrhea)
  • benro 12y ago
    We did the same thing when we lived in Uganda. Most westerners staying in the country for more than a few months stop taking anti-malarials. However most places where the expats live have access to antibiotics and to at least 1 or 2 Western (usually British) Doctors/Nurses.
    • xenophonf 12y ago
• jmnicolas 12y ago
  I'm surprised by the wolves. I though it was quasi a myth that they killed humans.
• guscost 12y ago
  Not to be That Guy, but millions and millions of these deaths were preventable. The UN vote to effectively ban DDT has got to be one of the worst public health disasters in history. It is sickening. http://www.fightingmalaria.org/article.aspx?id=1862 http://www.fightingmalaria.org/article.aspx?id=1862 http://perc.org/articles/legacy-ddt-ban http://perc.org/articles/legacy-ddt-ban http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ddt-use-to-combat-malaria/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ddt-use-to-combat-... http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-ddt-breeds-death http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15583-dd...
  • zerohm 12y ago
    Why trade a public health disaster for an environment disaster that will likely lead to a different public health disaster? Current restrictions seem reasonable. "The Stockholm Convention, which took effect in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The Convention has been ratified by more than 170 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups. Recognizing that total elimination in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible because there are few affordable or effective alternatives, public health use is exempt from the ban pending acceptable alternatives." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Restrictions_on_usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Restrictions_on_usage
    • guscost 12y ago
      > Why trade a public health disaster for an environment disaster that will likely lead to a different public health disaster? This is a false dichotomy. And regarding your other point: “Every life saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations.” -Paul Ehrlich, 1968 “By using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countries without the consideration of how to support the increase in populations.” -Michael McCloskey, 1971 “So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” -Alexander King, 1990 "An end to the continued domestic usage of the pesticide was decreed on June 14, 1972, when William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued an order finally cancelling nearly all remaining Federal registrations of DDT products." http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/ddt-ban-takes-effect http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/ddt-ban-takes-effect "WHO actively promoted indoor residual spraying for malaria control until the early 1980s when increased health and environmental concerns surrounding DDT caused the organization to stop promoting its use and to focus instead on other means of prevention." http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/ "Thanks largely to the use of DDT in Namibia, malaria related hospital admissions and deaths fell by 92% (29,059 to 2,264) and 96% (1,370 to 46) between 2001 and 2009. Similar trends have been seen in Botswana, South Africa, and Swaziland. For these benefits to be outweighed by risks requires reproducible evidence that DDT is dangerous, but none exists. WHO’s latest assessment found no evidence for concern “about levels of exposure for any of the end-points that were assessed” in carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, or developmental toxicity. Yet despite this endorsement and admirable malaria control results, UNEP is trying to eliminate DDT again. As major UNEP donors, including the European Union, have endorsed WHO’s position, UNEP’s motivations are unclear." http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e6801?ijkey=H4KijaZlhGvkDLK&keytype=ref http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e6801?ijkey=H4KijaZlhGvkD...
• rokhayakebe 12y ago
  So much for dogs, Man's best friend.
• mattmaroon 12y ago
  Not sure where he got 10 wolf deaths per year. The average number of wolf deaths per century is less than that. Not the most relevant comment I suppose, but it makes me curious about his data collection process.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • tootie 12y ago
    Globally?
• rgejman 12y ago
  Cows ought to be on that list as well. They kill 10-20 people per year in the US alone. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/dangerous-cows/ http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/dangerous-cow...
• sethammons 12y ago
  Can someone with better search-fu help me understand how freshwater snails kill humans? Google is only giving me this same blog post.
  • tokenadult 12y ago
    I knew the name of the disease before I started the search, but since you asked for search-fu, I'll mention that I Googled "snail fatal disease," which led to a Wikipedia article[1] and searching the article page for the word "snail" led to the specific section about the disease. The disease name, "schistosomiasis," is of course an even better search term for finding out more information about the disease. AFTER EDIT: using the same word string from your question here, "how freshwater snails kill humans" (NOT searching as a phrase, but as a string of words) on Google does indeed first bring up the Bill Gates blog post, but a few results below the search results show a World Health Organization document on freshwater snails[2] that largely answers the question. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_tropical_diseases#Schistosomiasis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_tropical_diseases#Sc... [2] http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/resources/vector337to356.pdf http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/resources/vector3...
  • jcomis 12y ago
    The snails harbor a parasitic worm which they pass on to the water supply. The worms then use humans as a host and lay a large amount of eggs in the host. The worms and the eggs themselves cause an enormous strain on the hosts liver, kidneys, digestive, and urinary system. They essentially migrate through the body to get to the liver where they can lay thousands of eggs a day. Most eggs then enter the intestines in order to pass out of the host and back into the water supply to mature in snails and start the cycle over. The real danger is you don't need to drink the water, just come in contact with it. So stepping in a puddle could cause infection. I was just in Colombia and there was a campaign trying to raise awareness on this so I learned a bunch about it. Scary stuff!
• longpoke_ 12y ago
  Why is the picture of the person white? Is it implying most deaths are from white men? Shouldn't it be black?
• orky56 12y ago
  Same link and same title? I'm confused https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7665106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7665106
  • tokenadult 12y ago
    Here the submission is not with the canonical URL, which spoofed the duplicate submission detector. It's too bad the previous submission had only one comment, a crap comment, so it's a good thing the article was submitted again.
    • orky56 12y ago
      Agreed. Must have missed the difference in URL.
• brianbreslin 12y ago
  One of the key innovations in the development of the Panama Canal was the fighting of malaria/yellow fever. Without understanding this, the canal wouldn't have been built, and Panama would probably look a lot more like Nicaragua than like Hong Kong. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/panama-fever/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-...
• swehner 12y ago
  For comparison, wikipedia's list of causes of death ranked by frequency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate#Causes_ranked_by_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...
• calbear81 12y ago
  What about the Photonic Fence that Bill Gates funded (http://intellectualventureslab.com/?page_id=6738 http://intellectualventureslab.com/?page_id=6738)? I think it was criticized because it required electrical power to run and that would have been a no go in sub-Saharan Africa but I imagine it would work great everywhere else.
• brianstorms 12y ago
  "What am I, chopped liver?" - every bacterium and virus, everywhere
  • TheCoelacanth 12y ago
    Neither of those are animals.
• reuwsaat 12y ago
  It's funny[0] that "Number of deaths" = "Number of people killed by animals". Perhaps if humans allowed that the deaths other animals is also of consequence we'd have a healthier relationship with nature. It's ranting about your home being destroyed by a hurricane, especially since you just rebuilt it after last years hurricane. Deaths by malaria and the destruction caused by hurricanes always terrible, but we need to look into mitigating such harm both by working with and against nature (which we are a part of, so I take issue a little bit even making that distinction, but, for the sake of discussion). [0] funny = sad
• islon 12y ago
  Mosquitos are like heart attacks: they kill thousands/millions but they are boring so nobody care. Sharks are like terrorists: they kill just some dozens but are super scary.