Our pick of 10 fearsome insects, from stingers to disease spreaders
Leoma Williams
1 Mosquito
The mosquito is responsible for more human fatalities a year than any other animal. It is, however, not the mosquitoes themselves that are deadly, but the parasites, bacteria and viruses they carry and pass on through their bites. The disease they transmit that has the highest death toll is malaria, caused by a blood-borne single-celled parasite. Malaria claimed an estimated 619,000 human lives in 2021.
2 Tsetse fly
Historically, this tiny animal has been implicated in inhibiting human settlement in vast swathes of Africa. It carries a deadly disease called sleeping sickness. Like malaria, it is transmitted by a bite and caused by a single-celled parasite. Without treatment sleeping sickness is often fatal.
3 Flea
In transmitting the bubonic plague from infected rodents to humans, the humble human flea was responsible for killing more than 25 million people in 14th-century Europe. In fact, fleas are such effective disease carriers that during WW2 the Japanese army air-dropped plague-infected fleas on Chinese cities as biological warfare.
4 Kissing bug
The deceptively friendly-sounding kissing bug is also a disease carrier that feeds on vertebrate blood. The disease-agent of significance is the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes a nasty illness called Chagas disease. About 6-7 million people have Chagas disease globally and it causes approximately 10,000 deaths per year.
5 Bee
Outside of disease carriers, there are actually very few insects that are dangerous, venomous or poisonous enough to be fatal to humans. But bee stings can be fatal to the small percentage of people that have an anaphylactic allergic reaction. Every year in the UK there are around 10 reported deaths from wasp or bee sting reactions.
6 Asian giant hornet
Though known as the ‘murder hornet’, it is not people this insect is likely to murder, but bees. These hornets have an astonishing capacity to decimate whole hives of honeybees. They kill off the workers until the workforce is severely depleted and then enter the hive and take the larvae, too.
7 Fire ants
These stinging ants clamp down onto the skin of their victim and inject a powerful and painful venom, which some people are fatally allergic to. For most people, however, the worst they will
