From the smallest viper in the world to a horrifying bug that might be in your house
right now!
Here are 10 of the tiniest creatures that can kill you!
10: Attack of the Bees Bees are far more deadly than you ever even
knew!
And there is no better example to showcase just how deadly a tiny bee is - than a recent
death in Texas.
A man died after suffering from cardiac arrest.
BUT he only had a heart attack because an aggressive swarm of bees attacked him outside
his home.
Thomas Hicks was just mowing his lawn like he did on any other ordinary Monday, when
dozens of angry bees came out of nowhere and began stinging him!
This happened in Breckenridge, roughly 130 miles(210km) from Dallas.
According to ABC News, the Breckenridge Fire Department responded to a 911 call and found
extremely aggressive bee activity.
Medics and firefighters tried their best to take care of Thomas but the poor man died
anyway.
His wife was the most devastated by the situation, seeing as she returned from grocery shopping
to find her husband literally screaming and being swarmed by bees.
She claimed that she couldn't even see his face because he was literally covered by the
angry swarm.
So, next time you see a beehive, remember that these tiny creatures can kill you - and
apparently sometimes for no reason at all!
9: The Harvester Ant The harvester ant is one of the deadliest
insects in the world.
It only takes a few hundred stings for a person to be killed by the poison delivered by this
tiny little creature.
This is shocking when compared to how many honeybees it takes to kill a human.
It usually takes about 1500 stings to be killed by honeybees, compared to just a few hundred
stings from harvester ants.
Of course, it's not easy to be killed by harvester ants.
You would have to fall asleep on top of an anthill or something for so many ants to bite
you.
Nonetheless, it definitely can happen.
The thing about harvester ants is that when one stings you, the others are going to smell
the pheromones emitted from the attacking ant and follow suit, swarming in mass and
stinging until they can’t sting anymore.
In this situation, death comes quickly.
But there is another ant so horrifying that it can even eat you!
It's known as the African driver ant, and there have been rumors that these ants sometimes
kill infants and eat them alive!
Yikes!
8: Namaqua Dwarf Adder The Namaqua dwarf adder is the smallest adder
in the world and considered to be the smallest deadly Viper on the planet.
This small snake only grows to be a maximum of around 1.5feet(0.4m) long.
And while that's not exactly tiny, it is pretty small for a serpent.
Usually when you think about snakes that can kill you think of an anaconda capable of swallowing
you whole or you hear the rattle of a rattlesnake in your mind.
But the venom of this tiny snake causes intense pain and swelling, and while deaths are rare,
they can definitely happen.
It's still a venomous viper and should be avoided at all costs!
The only good news is that the smallest adder in the world only occurs in the dunes around
southern Namibia.
It feeds primarily on lizards and frogs and is preyed upon by birds and larger snakes.
It lives in soft sand and comes out during the day.
It’s pretty hard to spot, though you can often find thin trails left behind in the
sand by them slithering around, hunting.
If you see one of these trails, it's best to go in the other direction.
Wait - how can you track a snake?
No footprints!
Have you ever had an experience with a deadly snake before?
Let me know in the comments below, and if you’re liking this video, be sure to hit
the thumbs up and subscribe button too!
7: Irukandji Jellyfish The Irukandji jellyfish is one of the deadliest
creatures in all of Australia.
It's also the smallest jellyfish to have such a high and shocking number of deaths.
While the box jellyfish is considered to be the most lethal jellyfish in the ocean, the
Irukandji jellyfish is a very close second.
According to Australian geographic, the sting from one of these almost microscopic jellyfish
can cause fatal brain hemorrhages, which send anywhere from 50 to 100 people to the hospital
every year.
The jellyfish itself is only about the size of your thumbnail – yet it has extremely
thin tentacles that can be up to three feet long(0.9m).
The body of the jellyfish is remarkably small and its tentacles are like extremely thin
invisible-like thread.
Since 1883, jellyfish have killed about 80 people in Australia.
The Irukandji were only responsible for about 2.
But even though it's not quite as deadly as the box jellyfish, it is painful enough that
some patients have begged to die rather than deal with the pain.
Some who have been stung by this jellyfish have claimed to feel their lungs and heart
crumbling.
Sometimes, victims are induced into comas because of the intense agony.
6: Fleas New research has revealed that the great Black
Death that resulted in millions of deaths in Europe between the 14th and 19th centuries
was not actually transmitted by rats.
Instead, new evidence shows that humans spread the disease.
Or more specifically, fleas attached to humans.
Researchers now know that the disease was probably spread by parasites carried between
humans on the backs of fleas.
This information comes from researchers at the University of Oslo and the University
of Ferrara, who have discredited rats as being primarily responsible for the great Black
Death.
Sorry rats!
By studying outbreaks of the plague that happened from between 1438 and 1813 in cities such
as London, Poland, Moscow, and Barcelona – with as many as 125,000 people dying in each outbreak,
researchers were able to determine that the bacteria responsible caused three significant
plague periods and that fleas were far more responsible than rats, with human-to-human
contact probably being one of the largest factors in transmission.
In the paper published by researchers, they concluded their discovery with, "Plague is
undeniably a disease of significant scientific, historic and public interest and is still
present in many parts of the world today.
It is therefore crucial that we understand the full spectrum of capabilities that this
versatile, pandemic disease has exhibited in the past.”
To stop these types of incidents from occurring in the future, scientists are trying to study
the life cycle of human fleas in relation to disease spreading.
Fleas might just seem like a nuisance, but there is evidence that shows outbreaks of
the Black Plague as recently as 1941 in Morocco were caused by body lice!
5: Flamboyant Cuttlefish The flamboyant cuttlefish is arguably the
most adorable cuttlefish in the entire world.
It is an amazing aquatic animal that undulates between yellow, brown, white, red, maroon,
and everything in between.
It's a very colorful and very tiny critter, only growing to a maximum of about 3 inches(8cm).
They live throughout Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and many other places in the East Indian
Ocean.
They’re related to octopuses and squid, they hunt small fish and crustaceans, and
they can and will kill you.
When threatened, the flamboyant cuttlefish stands its ground and begins flashing a color
scheme across its body so trippy that it tends to hypnotize animals and scare them away.
Toxicology studies of their muscle tissue done by researchers from the Museum Victoria
in Queensland have shown that the venom delivered by the flamboyant cuttlefish is on par with
that of the blue-ringed octopus.
These are two of the most venomous creatures that inhabit our planet’s oceans.
Why are the cutest and tiniest creatures the most dangerous?!
Luckily for everyone, human interactions with flamboyant cuttlefish are very rare.
They only live for up to two years and only eat live prey, making them difficult to house
in aquariums.
They're better left deep in the ocean where they can't kill anyone.
4: Lonomia Caterpillar The Lonomia caterpillar is responsible for
many accidents and many fatalities, particularly in Venezuela and Brazil.
In fact, in South America, this caterpillar is actually considered a public health problem!
This is because it has incredibly deadly venom which causes intravascular coagulations.
This can lead to hemorrhagic syndrome.
This syndrome is when a person loses blood from the blood vessels inside their body.
This caterpillar has many different kinds of toxins, from procoagulants to anticoagulants.
Its toxic venom is injected through bristles that cover its entire body, often resulting
in human death.
That's how incredibly dangerous this tiny little insect is.
But what's really strange is that the caterpillar is more dangerous in its larval form.
This is the form in which it has the bristles for injecting venom.
Once it turns into a giant silkworm moth, it loses much of its deadliness.
If you were to accidentally touch the Lonomia caterpillar, you would most likely suffer
a headache, fever, and vomiting.
But it wouldn't be for 24 hours until severe bleeding disorders occur inside your body,
eventually leading to death.
Basically if you’re pricked by one of these tiny dangerous creatures - you or whoever
you’re with won’t know anything is wrong for a while.
So even though there is an antivenom available, it will be too late.
3: Freshwater Snails As strange as it is to hear, freshwater snails
are some of the deadliest creatures in the world.
They aren't nearly as frightening as sharks or crocodiles, but they are wildly deadly
and kill more people every year than any large predator.
This is because freshwater snails carry a parasitic disease known as schistosomiasis.
It infects at least 250 million people around the globe every year, primarily in Asia and
Africa.
The parasitic disease kills roughly 200,000 people a year, far more deaths than what you
would expect from something so simple and tiny as a snail right?
According to Susanne Sokolow, an expert in disease from Stanford University’s Hopkins
Marine Station, it is one of the deadliest parasites in the world right now.
The worst part is that you don't even need to eat the snail to get sick.
You can contract the disease simply by being inside the water with the freshwater snails.
The parasite will exit the snail, swim into the water, and then penetrate through your
skin.
It’s like a microscopic pirate commandeering your body!
The parasite finds its way into your blood vessels, then lives inside you for an undetermined
amount of time, up to several decades.
What happens then is that the parasites give birth to eggs.
These eggs instinctively want to leave your body and get back into the water where they
can reattach to the freshwater snails.
But this probably isn't going to happen five years later when you're nowhere near the water.
The eggs try to get out of your skin anyway, and they end up getting stuck inside of different
tissues with their sharp barbs.
This result is anemia and fatigue and in 10% of cases, death.
Did you know that snails could be this deadly?
Have you heard of any other deadly snails?
2: Poison Dart Frog The poison dart frog is a cute, tiny and very
fascinating amphibian.
It's also a carnivore and considered to be one of the most toxic species found anywhere
on Earth.
They live in the rain forests of Central and South America.
The poison dart frog is also one of the smallest animals we've talked about today, growing
to be a maximum of about one inch(2.5cm).
Even though these frogs look enormous in pictures, they are actually about the size of your thumb
nail.
Did you just hold up your thumbnail?
Poison dart frogs can be found in a wide variety of bright colors.
These bright colors are used in nature to tell predators to go away or risk being poisoned.
The poison dart frog has enough poison inside of it to kill over 20,000 mice.
So it can kill a human no problem.
But why is this little frog so poisonous?
According to National Geographic, scientists believe it's the insects they eat.
Because the frogs snap out their long and sticky tongues and catch all kinds of small
beetles and termites and ants and millipedes, scientists think the toxicity inside their
victims somehow leaks out of them and becomes accumulated on their skin – like a slimy
armor coating of pure death.
1: Vietnamese Giant Centipede The Vietnamese giant centipede looks like
a walking nightmare.
It is an exceptionally aggressive insect that can often be found inside private collections.
For whatever wonky reason, people love collecting giant centipedes and keeping them in their
homes.
But this is a pretty bad idea.
The bite of a Vietnamese giant centipede is extremely painful.
It doesn't usually cause death, but depending on a person's reaction, it can certainly be
fatal.
Even if it's not fatal, the pain of a giant centipede biting you is enough to make you
scream and pee your pants.
Oddly enough, the Vietnamese giant centipede is not only found in Vietnam.
They are found all throughout tropical regions of Southeast Asia.
They are easily recognizable by their red antennae, their disgusting yellow legs, and
their equally disgusting brown bodies.
If you know anyone keeping a Vietnamese giant centipede as a pet, you might not want to
visit their house.
Thanks for watching!
Which of these animals scares you the most?
Which one were you most surprised by?
Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and come back
again for another awesome video!
See you next time!
Bye!