Top 5-1 Deadliest Insects

5. Fire Ants

Typically nesting in sand or soil, fire ants build rather large mounds and tend to feed on plant life and occasionally crickets and smaller insects. When bothered, however, the fire ant sting is a venomous prick that feels like it’s burning with fire, hence the name and swells up into a painful pustule. A few small stings can be quickly treated and cured, but when the ants swarm, which they are often wont to do, that’s when the trouble starts. 150 deaths per day as well as millions of dollars in crop damage yearly make these ants fearsome indeed.

4. TseTse Fly

Another carrier of the deadly sleeping sickness, the TseTse fly feeds on the blood of vertebrates. The spread the disease, trypanosomiases in humans, by biting their victim and passing it through their mouth parts. Living in Africa, the death toll is that much more immense killing 250-300 thousand victims per year.

3. Bees

Thanks largely to the introduction of the Africanized HoneyBee; the death toll has taken a sharp upturn over the past fifteen years. Normal solitary bees are not known to sting humans for the sheer need to do so, and, even so, they die once the deed is done. However, many people the world over are seriously allergic to bee stings and can experience anaphylactic shock causing death. But, unlike those standard bees, Africanized Bees, or Killer Bees, will attack with the slightest provocation in large numbers swarming over the victims. The death toll per year is in the thousands.

2. Fleas

Not just the annoying little bites you receive as one of the lovely perks of owning a pet, no, fleas are directly responsible for the spread of the Bubonic Plague from their rat hosts to humans carrying Yersinia Pestsis. Feeding on the blood of warm-blooded vertebrates, fleas can infest an animal or area rather quickly. If bitten, the wound swells into a pustule and can causeallergic reactions. But, thanks to the spread of the plague killing millions, the flea can be a terrible pest.

1. Anopheles Mosquito

Mosquitoes are a terrible irritant and, because they feed on blood, can drive a person mad just by being outside in the right conditions. Eggs get laid and grow in stagnant areas of water and millions can hatch from one spot. But,the worst aspect of the mosquito is that it’s a carrier for blood-borne diseases, specifically: Malaria. Still numbering in the hundreds of million cases per year, malaria is responsible for more deaths than every other insect combined.