1.5 million people are killed by animals every year. Almost one million by other animals, and more than half a million from direct conflict among ourselves.
Almost all of the deaths from other animals are caused by just two types: mosquitoes and snakes.
Read more in our article: https://ourworldindata.org/deadliest-animals
These numbers are estimates, and some come with significant uncertainty. That’s why we’ve published a detailed methodology explaining our sources and how they compare.
by ourworldindata
32 Comments
Data source: IHME, GBD (2025); World Health Organization; CrocAttack; ISAF; and others. For full details on sources, see [our documentation](https://docs.owid.io/projects/etl/analyses/deadliest_animals/).
Tools used: initial plotting with the [OWID-Grapher](https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher), finishing in Figma
It feels a little unfair to the mosquitoes to only count intentional human killings. After all, the mosquitoes don’t intend to kill humans either, it is just a side effect of the diseases they can carry. It seems to me all the human deaths caused by humans infecting each other with diseases should also count for the “humans” stat.
Snakes are just assholes though.
Dogs killing 40k annually gives me real pause. That’s crazy.
Where are the cows???? I heard many times cows kill more humans than sharks 😂
Hippopotami.
My day is ruined.
Considering in 2023, 50k people died to suicide in the US alone, a ridiculous amount of effort must have went into this project not to make humans the number one leader in deaths. I salute you, hardworking data spinners! 🫡
i thought snakes would be way lower
Flies go underrepresented imo
dogs being high is crazy, do hyenas or like wild dogs in australia or something go really hard or does it get downplayed a lot just how dangerous dogs can be with children in particular?
I wish you hadn’t changed from being a volume based display to a bar graph display of the data. It should be consistent.
Ha, this is so silly. Just read the documentation for gray wolves.
does it also include deaths by dogs because of rabies? because it would be unfair to not include them
I’ll be great to have the opposite graph: How many animals are killed by humans each year?
The real interesting information would be peer interaction or incident. I rarely come across a bear, but when I do I’m certainly more scared than when I see a mosquito.
We are only second, have to push it harder.
This seems like a made-up chart with maybe directionally correct data but not that accurate? The data is all over the place. Dogs kill 40k people a year? What? According to cats? Deer are missing (200+ deer-related deaths a year in vehicle accidents). Cows are missing. Should dragons be included?
Downvote.
great chart? how did you make this?
freshwater snails? by eating them or…?
edit: no, it’s *Schistosomiasis*, a disease spread by snails that is pretty bad in Africa.
Roaming gangs of freshwater snails are a major problem in my neighborhood, you don’t want to find yourself concerned by these little guys.
Do deer not count? I mean, most of the time it’s not cause of the deer doing anything and rather being a moving object that people die from hitting with a car.
Need to see it based on the count of the animal too. There are way more mosquitoes than humans. Way more snakes in the world than elephants, would make for an interesting graph.
Elephants kill 1000 a year?
This surprises me not because of the fact they are giant and therefore dangerous, but because their population numbers arent that high, and in general arent overly aggressive to my knowledge.
Stupidest “statistic”. Mosquitos are not the organism doing the killing. No one dies of mosquito bites.
Deadliest to humans. Humans are the deadliest by far, killing trillions of sentient beings annually.
Now if we count all life, human is easily #1
Plasmodium is the parasite which causes Malaria, the mosquitoes only carry the parasite and infect humans. They are not the killers
Very disappointed in Scorpions. I liked a lot of their songs growing up
Are we ignoring war and united healthcare?? 👀 🍿
With 72 deaths a year in the U.S. from bees, wasps, hornets would suggest a worldwide number of 1700, not 500 if evenly distributed through the population.
Who’s the weirdo kissing bugs
Does this include political leaders and insurance companies?
Where are cats? Toxoplasmosis infects almost 50% of human population. There is no way they are not at least in top 5.