17 Deadly Animals

CHAPTER 1 Watch Out! THE WORLD IS A BIG PLACE. AND OFTEN THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN IT AREN'T VERY NICE. Think about it every living thing needs food. Many animals and people only eat plants. But other animals and people eat meat. Big animals eat small animals. Small animals usually eat even smaller animals. But some small animals eat big animals. It's an exciting world, but it isn't safe. Many animals run away from predators all their lives. And when they're not doing that, they're running after their prey. Animals kill for food, but they also kill to stay alive, to stop predators from killing them. In one way or another, most animals are deadly! What about people? Well, we're really deadly. We eat lots of animals and kill others just for fun. Most humans live in towns and cities. We aren't always looking behind us to see if an animal wants an easy meal. We don't have to run from deadly predators every time we walk down the street. But some animals kill people. Why do they do that? Is it because they don't like us? Or because we try to kill them? Or is it because they're HUNGRY?

CHAPTER 2 Deadly Animals, Big and Small THERE ARE MANY DEADLY ANIMALS IN THE WORLD, AND THEY KILL IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS! Meet the flying killer: the mosquito! It lives almost everywhere and kills more people than any other animal! Mosquitoes kill more people every five minutes than sharks kill in a whole year. Over 2.7 million people die every year because of this nasty little bug. But how does it kill? Mosquitoes have diseases like malaria and yellow fever, and those diseases can kill. Mosquitoes drink your blood. See that mosquito on your arm? It's putting two tubes into you. One tube takes blood; the other stops your blood from getting dry so it can drink more. Delicious! Feeling hungry? How about some nice fish? When you go to a restaurant in Japan, ask for puffer fish, or fugu in Japanese. Make sure the fugu chef knows what he's doing! This fish is full of poison. One fish can kill 30 people. If the chef doesn't take out the poison, you can die quickly or you can die slowly. It can take 20 minutes or many hours. The poison goes through your body. First, you can't walk. Next, you can't breathe. And then, you're dead. There are no medicines to stop the poison, but sometimes you can stop the poison if you vomit.

Look at the baby polar bear. Don't you love it? Now look at the photo above. That's the polar bear just a few years later. Polar bears have sharp claws and teeth. They swim and run fast, and they're big. They can be 2.5 meters tall, and some weigh as much as 720 kilograms. That's a lot of bear. Polar bears eat birds, fish, and other sea animals. They live in very cold places, like Alaska, so they don't usually see many humans. But the world is getting warmer. It's harder for bears to find food. So they come nearer to places where people live. Sometimes they're so hungry they kill and eat people. But don't worry! It doesn't happen often. "I can see you with my 24 eyes!" Yes, that's right. Box jellyfish have 24 eyes— six eyes in four places! But their tentacles are what you need to worry about. Tentacles are the things that look like long legs. There are as many as 60 of them on a box jellyfish. And each one has 5,000 ways to sting you. Oh, and kill you. You can't see these jellyfish in water. That's a problem. Swim into a box jellyfish by accident and the tentacles poison you. You now have only about five minutes to say goodbye to your friends and family. These jellyfish are some of the fastest killers on Earth.

Let's get out of the water and go and see something cute. Here's the slow loris from the jungles of southeast Asia. Look at those big brown eyes! It's almost like a toy bear. What a sweet, friendly little animal. Or is it? The slow loris does an unusual thing. It keeps poison under its arms. Then it takes the poison, puts it in its mouth, and bites you. Bam! You go into shock. That means it's very difficult for you to breathe, and you need a doctor fast. The shock can kill some people. Ah, good! Here's an animal that only eats vegetables. It's a hippo. Hippos eat grass and other plants at night. In the day, they're in the water. They look a little funny, too... until you get close. Did you know hippos kill more people than any other mammal in Africa? Hippos are bad-tempered animals. They don't like it when you get close, especially to their babies. They have long sharp teeth. They're heavy, over 3,000 kilograms! They don't look fast, but they can run 50 kilometers an hour. If a hippo catches you, it isn't funny. It's usually deadly.

People call the Lonomia caterpillar "the lazy clown" because it looks like a clown and it's slow. Clowns are funny, but these animals can be deadly. Lonomia caterpillars live on trees in the rainforests of South America. The problem is, they're difficult to see. People touch them by accident. Also, they live in groups, so you can touch more than one. These caterpillars have poisonous spikes. It doesn't hurt if you touch a spike, but a day or more later your body starts bleeding inside and outside. That hurts! You're in a lot of pain. Then, important parts of your body stop working. It's time to see a doctor. In January 2013, the people from a village in South Africa went into their houses and didn't come out for a long time. Why? Because 15,000 Nile crocodiles ran away from a crocodile farm. And the people knew that crocodiles are deadly. Nile crocodiles are the biggest crocodiles in Africa about 3.5 to 5 meters long. And they have more than 60 teeth. That's very good for eating meat. They open their mouths, catch an animal like a small hippo (or maybe a human), and take it underwater where it can't breathe. Then dinner's ready!

This colorful animal can be red, blue, yellow, black, or green. It's small, about as long as your little finger, and very cute, too. Meet the poison dart frog. With a name like that, there has to be a problem. Well, yes, it's poisonous. It gets its poison from the bugs it eats. The poison doesn't kill it. The poison stays inside the frog until you touch it. One frog has enough poison to kill ten people. And the doctor can't help. But it's not all bad. Frog poison, like some snake poisons, is a painkiller. People want to use this poison to make medicines. Do you remember getting sick, having a toothache, or feeling hungry? It's no fun, is it? Animals get sick and hungry, too, and sometimes that's why they kill people. In 1898, some workers in Kenya had to build a bridge. For nine months, two African lions called "The Man-eaters of Tsavo" came at night and killed one worker after another. But why? People think the lions were sick and hungry. A disease in Kenya killed the lions' normal prey. One of the lions also had a bad tooth, so it couldn't catch animals so well. People were easy to catch and eat!