These Are the 15 Deadliest Animals in the World
On June 20, 1975, Stephen Spielberg’s summer smash Jaws hit theaters across the country, forever changing the way people view sharks. Dozens of movies in the decades since have been inspired by the story of a man-hunting shark, which studies have shown lead to increased fear of shark attacks. Humans have taken to killing sharks to prevent such attacks, and in doing so have decimated shark populations despite the fact that sharks only kill about six people every year.
While every death is tragic, shark attacks represent a small fraction of the number of humans killed by animals each year: an estimated 1,537,166 in 2015. To find which animals deserve their lethal reputations, Stacker analyzed a list of the world’s deadliest animals as compiled in Gates Notes, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates’ blog.
Gates collected data from sources like the World Health Organization, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, National Geographic, the National Science Foundation, the Center for Disease Control, and the World Wildlife Fund to estimate how many people worldwide were killed by animals in 2015. The 15 species on this list were ranked by the total number of people killed by each that year.