Yet the mosquito does not directly harm anyone. ![]() The much-slandered shark and wolf shared 15th position, killing an average of 10 people per annum. Next on the list were hippos with 500, and elephants and lions with 100 fatalities each. The crocodile was ranked 10th, with 1,000 annual deaths. The fierce killers of lore and Hollywood celebrity were much further down our list. ![]() Humans came in a distant second at 475,000, followed by snakes (50,000), dogs and sandflies (25,000 each), the tsetse fly, and the assassin or kissing bug (10,000 each). Taking a broad range of estimates into account, since 2000, the average annual number of human deaths caused by the mosquito was around 2 million. While our counterattacks are reducing the number of casualties she perpetrates – malaria deaths in particular are declining rapidly – the mosquito remains the deadliest hunter of human beings on the planet. And yet her deadly offensive campaigns and crimes against humanity continue with reckless abandon. In fact, our defence budget for personal shields, sprays and other means of deterring her unrelenting raids is $11bn (£8.8bn) a year, and rising rapidly. The biting female warrior of this droning insect population is armed with at least 15 lethal and debilitating biological weapons, to be used against 7.7 billion humans deploying suspect and often self-detrimental defensive capabilities. ![]() A swarming and consuming army of 110tn enemy mosquitoes patrols every inch of the globe except for Antarctica, Iceland and a handful of French Polynesian micro-islands.
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