Scariest animal in the history of man!

[nokhor]

i've heard that hippos kill more people in africa by far than any other animal. they're supposed to be extremely territorial and will chase someone for miles and miles. since they also like to be under water, a sailboat or raft or swimmer will suddenly be attacked from below. the first pharoah of egypt was supposedly killed by just such an attack, and the totem of the evil god Set in egyptian mythology was the hippo.

[yesdachi]

Great posts everyone!

Here’s a recap of some of the contenders for the top spot IMO: crocks/caiman, hippos, bears, tigers, ice age eagles and tigers, freaky fish from the deep and sharks.

I think the freaky deep sea fish are the scariest in appearance but the chances of ever seeing one is about nil so they are not too scary to me but sharks are pretty common and yelling shark will definitely get some attention, they have also been made popular by movies and books (although not until recently as Simon Appleton points out). The shark is way up on my list.

Crocks and hippos are so darn big and if you are in the water its not like you can just run away if they come close, plus with crocks especially they hide until your almost stepping on them.

Bears in the north and tigers in the south are both common villains in many stories and have been known to attack humans. The tigers stalking skill makes me think I wouldn’t stand a chance wandering thru the jungle and the fact the bear could be anywhere I would be (similar interests, water/food) while out hiking is not a pleasant thought.

And owls, and cows… er I mean crows are a creepy sight and have been used many times to set a scary mood in books, movies and stories of all kinds (Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds freaked me out).

Insects, snakes and spiders are scary and can even be deadly but unless “swarming” they don’t have what it takes IMO. Great mood setters though.

Hummm… I wonder if the “plague” could be considered an animal?

[Watchman]

Historically, people have tended to reserve their more virulent fear and loathing (often coloured with reverence and worship) to the resident large carnivore that's dangerous to them and/or their means of livelihood. Anything poisonous, or something that offends their worldview (look up sometime what the Old Testament Israelites considered "loathsome in the eyes of God"; anthropologists have a field day with similar issues, and a theory I've seen claims that particular list is 100% "aberrant" animals - the sort that don't fit into clear main categorizations, like bats; penguins, pangolins and the like would no doubt have been included had the Prophets known of them) tends to come a close second.

Europeans, and many others, feared the wolf, not so much because it was itself very directly dangerous to them (although it could happen, particularly on harsh winters when the packs were starving), but because it was dangerous to their livestock and hence could threaten their subsistence. The werewolf myths are partly connected to this (and to a sort of hallucinogenic mold that often takes root in insufficiently dry grain...); conversely the Pacific peoples feared the sharks, and had their equivalent legends about were-sharks...

[English assassin]

Kimodo dragons are pretty horrible. Big and ugly enough to start with, and one bite, and then they just wait following you around until all the foul bacteria in their mouths finish you off with blood poisoning. I suppose they only live in a few places though so its not a widespread fear.

Surely the most widespread fear would be snakes.

[GoreBag]

i've heard that hippos kill more people in africa by far than any other animal. they're supposed to be extremely territorial and will chase someone for miles and miles. since they also like to be under water, a sailboat or raft or swimmer will suddenly be attacked from below. the first pharoah of egypt was supposedly killed by just such an attack, and the totem of the evil god Set in egyptian mythology was the hippo.

I thought Set's animal counterpart was unknown for whatever reason.

[Watchman]

The few images of him I've seen tended to look somewhat like Anubis, ie. a rather uncertain canine. But then again, wasn't he supposed to be the god of the deserts ? Even given the way religious symbolism tends to get appointed, a hippo (a manifestly riverine animal) would be really far-fetched.

[Conqueror]

I think scorpions are among the scariest animals, although I don't have to worry about them where I live. They are very nasty looking with their claws and stingers, and some of the species have pretty potent venom.

[Riedquat]

In the "insecta" class the "tse-tse" fly.
In the "arachnida" class all the genres and subgenres.

About mammals nobody mention the "desmodus rotundus" known like the vampire.

The scariest one I think is the Comodo dragon.

[dgfred]

I'm not so afraid of the squashable creatures . A pissed-off giant
bear or a large bull shark are a different matter- they would guess I was
a Giant squid, because of the large 'ink' pile I left behind.

[GoreBag]

Oh yeah...camel spiders. My second choice vote goes to camel spiders.



These are American soldiers in the Middle East, confused and bewildered by the creatures. I've heard second-hand that they prefer the shade, so they walk around all day in your shadow. They can also keep speed with a sprinting human, so they stay in your shadow even after you decide to get the crap out of there.

They prey on sleeping mammals by biting them and injecting a paralytic venom that numbs the area of the bite. They then eat the warm flesh as the creature sleeps - it never wakes up from any pain. I heard of a case where a man woke up one morning with a camel spider on his face. His cheek had been eaten away.

[Shadow]

where a man woke up one morning with a camel spider on his face. His cheek had been eaten away.

Now this is scary

[Watchman]

Bah. Evening stories to put your kids to sleep with compared to the sheer ickiness of honest-to-Dog parasites, particularly the tropical kinds. Now that's some singularly nasty stuff, all the more so as the blighters (or rather their side effects; few parasites actually want to kill their food source, but...) kill fairly appalling numbers of people every year. Plus they tend to be both insidious and godawfully ugly.

Anyway, I know that camel spider thing from way back. Point one: in the photo there's two of the things. Point two: they're being held very close to the lens.

That aside, I'd also be a little disturbed by comparatively large carnivorous arachnids that insisted upon employing me as a sunshade, especially if they were willing to follow me around. And particularly if I'd seen the little scuttlers munch on some hapless rodent...

[nokhor]

I thought Set's animal counterpart was unknown for whatever reason.

third paragraph from the bottom lists the creature avatars of Set. i would guess that hippos were part of his portfolio due to the darkness of the river bottom and thier destructive potential.

http://www.touregypt.net/SET.HTM

[Red Harvest]

Yes I can agree with that - I've actually had a hammerhead glide right past me on the surface once. I like sharks though, I just recognise that they are part of the risk of diving.

Barracuda are far more dangerous, because they are so blazingly stupid (and quick.) They will catch a glint off the shiny alloy on your regulator and shoot in after you at high speed. Wave your finger around them and they will try to take it off. I keep a closer eye on them than on sharks.

Watch out for some of the surgeon fish varieties as well. I've know people nipped on the face by them, and one tried to bite me once--I sensed something was wrong when he was staring intently at my face from 12" away, so I shielded my face so with my hand and it bit the exhaust valve port on my second stage. Those fish have tiny mouths so it is just painful if they take a chunk out, rather than dangerous.

The ones that freak me out are big rays. Now I like rays - I really do. But when a 3m across ray sneaks up on you and then glides ~1m over the top of you it's worrying. I really would like them a lot more if they were polite enough to not sneak up on me.

I love the big manta rays. I'm not afraid of them, only concern I have is that I'll injure them if they run into me while feeding. In Hawaii we used our dive lights to feed those beauties by attracting plankton. The problem was the manta kept diving lower and lower and started bumping into us. I was concerned about scratching them and giving them an infection.

I did find an electric ray in the sand by our anchor chain once. That was on a night dive, so I gave it a wide berth. That one could have been a problem considering how much traffic there was at that location.

Aside from that, junior yacht clubs are pretty scary. See that blue and white flag? That's a diving flag. It means there is an exclusion zone around the boat with it on it. DO NOT COME NEAR IT. Seeing the keel of a yacht come within a metre of you is worrying to say the least.

There's your problem...the flag is supposed to be red and white! Does Australia use a different color? Or is this an international yachting thing?

[GoreBag]

Interesting. Thank you for the link.

[Productivity]

Oh yeah...camel spiders. My second choice vote goes to camel spiders.

These are American soldiers in the Middle East, confused and bewildered by the creatures. I've heard second-hand that they prefer the shade, so they walk around all day in your shadow. They can also keep speed with a sprinting human, so they stay in your shadow even after you decide to get the crap out of there.

They prey on sleeping mammals by biting them and injecting a paralytic venom that numbs the area of the bite. They then eat the warm flesh as the creature sleeps - it never wakes up from any pain. I heard of a case where a man woke up one morning with a camel spider on his face. His cheek had been eaten away.

They are scary until you realise that their abilities are actually urban legends.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/camelspider.asp

[Productivity]

There's your problem...the flag is supposed to be red and white! Does Australia use a different color? Or is this an international yachting thing?

It's allways been Blue and White here - link. That's what I learnt it as, and I've never seen anything other than blue and white here.

I do like the rays, it's just they give a bit of a fright when they come up behind you and just glide over you. When I know they are there, they are great.

Cuttlefish are also worrying - pretty freaky looking things, with the tentacles going out the front and pulsing with light. We've had a few deaths attributed to them here - people panicing when attacked by them and losing their air - personally I don't understand it - the cuttlefish can't do much to you. At worst you get out of the water, cuttlefish and all - then we'll see who wins that contest.

Barracuda are a worry - on the other hand, I've seen more sharks than barracuda.

[GoreBag]

Fair enough. They were my second choice, after all, but this fits perfectly into the thread along with wolves, bears and other folk-lore dangers.

[Red Harvest]

It's allways been Blue and White here - link. That's what I learnt it as, and I've never seen anything other than blue and white here.

You might want to look at the "diver down" flag, I'm not really a flag & boat guy so this has been educational. I'm not sure if it would be kosher to fly both flags or not. The diver down flag is the one I've seen everywhere I've travelled, but I wasn't really looking at the boat pennants, they might be using the blue and white. I'm used to having the diver down flag out where we are diving, sometimes on a buoy, etc. Haven't been down under though. The red and white diver down is an international symbol like the other pennant. It's key advantage is that it means dive operations only, no alternate meanings.

Cuttlefish are also worrying - pretty freaky looking things, with the tentacles going out the front and pulsing with light. We've had a few deaths attributed to them here - people panicing when attacked by them and losing their air - personally I don't understand it - the cuttlefish can't do much to you. At worst you get out of the water, cuttlefish and all - then we'll see who wins that contest.

Hard to imagine someone freaking out over a cuttlefish, let alone dying! Sort of like octopus. Reminds me of a lady divemaster handling an octopus and getting it a bit perturbed. After it flashed red, then inked, she tried to put it down, but by then it was looking for cover. (There were some small sharks in the general area but not nearby at the time.) So the octopus tried to get in her BC jacket with her. She had a heck of a time pulling it free.

With the cuttlefish, seems like if you lose your air you just do a free ascent. Heck I swim around a lot without my regulator in my mouth. You can go a looooonnnng way on compressed air. Plus it makes it easier to control my bubbles when I'm trying to get close to something that spooks easily, or when I'm inverted.

Now I've heard about those blue ring octopus. They are incredibly deadly if you are foolish enough to handle them or try stuffing them in a pocket, etc.

[Papewaio]

Women...

[Productivity]

Hard to imagine someone freaking out over a cuttlefish, let alone dying! Sort of like octopus. Reminds me of a lady divemaster handling an octopus and getting it a bit perturbed. After it flashed red, then inked, she tried to put it down, but by then it was looking for cover. (There were some small sharks in the general area but not nearby at the time.) So the octopus tried to get in her BC jacket with her. She had a heck of a time pulling it free.

With the cuttlefish, seems like if you lose your air you just do a free ascent. Heck I swim around a lot without my regulator in my mouth. You can go a looooonnnng way on compressed air. Plus it makes it easier to control my bubbles when I'm trying to get close to something that spooks easily, or when I'm inverted.

Now I've heard about those blue ring octopus. They are incredibly deadly if you are foolish enough to handle them or try stuffing them in a pocket, etc.

I agree - it's sheer stupiity to die of a cuttlefish. Yes they are freaky looking, yes they are aggresive, but they will not kill you. But people panic - and panicing underwater is not a smart thing to do. Cuttlefish don't kill people - stupidity kills people with assistance from the cuttelfish.

Actually, you're octopus reminds me of an ammusing situation. I was poking around in a reef, when I see this cray scuttle straight out - not usual behaviour at all. Anyway I see a octopus advancing after it, ok so this makes more sense. Anyway, five seconds later a cuttlefish comes in at high speed and goes for the same cray. Poor crayfish - not safe in the cave, not safe out of the cave.

Re. the flag, I imagine you can run both - but really, a yacht club should have people who know what it means in it, especially when the blue and white is pretty much standard here - they were about a metre away from having a manslaughter case on their hands.

[econ21]

Kimodo dragons are pretty horrible.

Yeah, I was going to mention them for the reasons you gave but then I saw a documentary which had a clip of them wandering around a village scavenging rather like goats. The villagers - including children - seemed pretty unconcerned by them - shooing them off if they came to close to food. I guess they just don't bother people much.

From personal experience, I must say that a lion is a pretty awesome sight close up. They didn't get the reputation of being kind of the beasts for nothing. I was in a safari van and a massive lion just strolled within a foot or so of my vantage point. Massive, swaggering and stuffed full of testosterone. Fortunately, he was totally unconcerned by us tourists (it was the Masaai Mara - more tourists than wildebeest and there's a million or so wildebeest). The lions you see in zoos just don't prepare you for the bulk and attitude of some in the wild.

[Taurus]

NeonGod,

Your Camel Spider post just reinforces my opinion that Spiders! are the scariest.

[nokhor]

one of the creatures here, that i will not mention, because i don't want to see any images of them, elicit a complete primal response from me. brings out fear, disgust, loathing, hatred. its always been that way. and it gets worse, when i try not to think of it. i will not think of 'x', i will not think of 'x'. so of course i think of it. its the only real phobia i have even though i know, logically my chances of me running into one is close to nil.

[Productivity]

Is it an ocelot?

[Watchman]

Spiders are nice. They eat bugs. Bugs, on the average, are very much not on our side (given that for starters a fair few of them feed on us, or our food). That makes spiders our friends by default.

'Course, they'll still bite us in the ass if we sit on them by accident.

[yesdachi]

Spiders are nice. They eat bugs. Bugs, on the average, are very much not on our side (given that for starters a fair few of them feed on us, or our food). That makes spiders our friends by default.

'Course, they'll still bite us in the ass if we sit on them by accident.

In some animal planet show the other day they mentioned that w/o spiders we would be completely over run by bugs in 6 months. I’m not sure what there definition of “over run” is but it makes you appreciate their work. I still don’t like them in my house though.

[Taurus]

I still don't like them fullstop. Aarrggh!

[Watchman]

I rather like watching the things wander around, personally. They're kinda cute, and have the sort of solemn grace many such little creepy-crawlies proceed with...

Plus some of them weave some very beautiful webs.

[LeftEyeNine]

So here comes the question..

Why do the bugs look as if they do not belong to this planet ?