Deadly
Species with venom, bite force, or hunting ability sufficient to kill a person. Most want nothing to do with us, which is the only reason the numbers stay low.
African Buffalo
A heavyweight, cow-like grazer whose bulls sometimes chase lions into trees.
African Bush Elephant
Largest land mammal alive, matriarch-led herds, and rumbles felt through the ground.
African Crested Porcupine
The world's longest porcupine turns its back on a threat, rattles a tail of hollow quills, and charges backward to stab anything that ignores the warning.
African Lion
Pride king, 114-decibel territorial roar carrying three miles, and cooperative savanna hunt apex.
American Alligator
An armored reptile with jaws that can crack a turtle shell, and a mouth that can go through 3,000 teeth in a lifetime.
American Black Bear
A bear whose sense of smell is about seven times stronger than a bloodhound's.
American Crocodile
A salt-tolerant crocodile with a tapered snout, and the first crocodilian with evidence of reproducing without a male.
Amur Leopard
The rarest big cat in the world, with fur up to three inches long in winter, living alone in the forests of the Russian Far East and northeast China.
Asian Elephant
A boneless trunk with about 150,000 muscle units, a pregnancy of nearly two years, and rumbles humans can barely hear.
Asian Giant Hornet
The world's largest hornet, whose raiding parties can kill thousands of honeybees in a few hours.
Asian Tiger Mosquito
A striped mosquito that rode used tyres out of South-East Asia's forests and around the world, with eggs that can wait out a winter.
Bengal Tiger
Longest canines of any big cat, stripes as unique as a fingerprint, and the only tigers at home in mangroves.
Black Caiman
The Amazon's largest predator and the biggest member of the alligator family, with males that grow past four to five meters.
Black Mamba
Its scales are olive-brown, but the inky black mouth it flashes when cornered backs a venom that attacks the nervous system two ways at once.
Black Rhinoceros
A hooked, prehensile lip, a recorded top speed of about 34 miles per hour, and two horns that grow from the skin all its life.
Blue-Ringed Octopus
Golf-ball sized tide pool titan flashing iridescent electric blue rings and deadly tetrodotoxin.
Box Jellyfish
The translucent ocean predator with 24 eyes, no brain, and venom that can kill a person in minutes.
Brazilian Wandering Spider
A web-less wandering spider of south-eastern South America that hunts among the vegetation after dark, throws its front legs up when threatened, and carries venom packed with peptides that jam ion channels.
Brazilian Yellow Scorpion
The asexual arachnid that invaded Brazilian cities without needing a single male to reproduce.
Bull Shark
Freshwater river invader, named for its stout build and a reputation for aggression, with a harder bite for its weight than a great white's.
Burmese Python
A giant constrictor with stretchy jaws, and the Everglades invader linked to a 99.3 percent drop in raccoon sightings.
Common European Adder
A zigzag-backed viper that lives from Britain to the Pacific and is the only snake north of the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia.
Cottonmouth
A swamp pit viper that warns with a wide-open white mouth and hunts on land and in water.
Deathstalker Scorpion
A desert scorpion about as long as a credit card, one of the most dangerous on Earth, whose venom yielded chlorotoxin, a peptide used in cancer research.