Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Deadliest animals


This is a cool infographic.  Like most such graphics, it raises lots of questions.  In addition to Nathan's question about the wide error margin, I wonder:

  • Why isn't the tiger on this list?  They appear to kill more people per year than lions.
  • It's a little weird to compare animals that directly kill humans with animals that are vectors for diseases that kill humans.  Should tuberculosis be on the list?  That apparently kills 2 million people a year.
  • What is the deadliness by rate of exposure?  That is, what proportion of mosquito-human interactions result in human deaths?  I expect the proportion of tiger-human interactions that result in human deaths to be quite a bit higher.

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