Ranking Dangers

The March-April issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article titled "The World's Most Deadly Animal," by Harriet Hall. The various candidates for this honor are ranked by the number of human beings they kill annually. A character in Robert Heinlein's TUNNEL IN THE SKY declares humans to be the deadliest animals. The villain in Richard Connell's classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game," who hunts his captives like wild beasts, would agree. Hall's list of the top ten most dangerous animals comes from this source:

Science Focus

Sharks and black widow spiders, which many people might think of when "deadly creatures" come to mind, don't even make it into the top ten. Lions do, barely, at the bottom. Hippos, elephants, and crocodiles beat them. The human animal (counting only homicides) rates second rather than first. The deadliest animal on Earth as quantified by people killed every year? The mosquito.

As Hall points out at the beginning of her article, our tendency to overlook mosquitoes and another high-ranking insect, the assassin bug, highlights the "availability heuristic." Facts and incidents that stick in our minds because of their sensational content tend to be perceived as more common than they actually are. There's a widespread attitude of, "Why is it getting so hot, and how did we get into this handbasket?" when in fact teenage pregnancy, adolescent illicit drug use, violent crime, drunk driving fatalities, and the worldwide number of deaths in battle have all decreased over the past few decades. We sometimes forget that frightening incidents and trends make headlines BECAUSE they're unusual, not commonplace. The occasional shark attack draws much more attention than thousands of malaria-causing mosquito bites.

Steven Pinker, in the section on phobias in his book HOW THE MIND WORKS, postulates that adult phobias are instinctive childhood fears that haven't been outgrown. These universal fears, which fall into certain well-defined categories, reflect the threats most hazardous to our "evolutionary ancestors"—snakes, spiders, heights, storms, large carnivores, darkness, blood, strangers, confinement, social scrutiny, and leaving home alone. In modern cities, the brain's fear circuitry often fails to function for optimal protection. "We ought to be afraid of guns, driving fast, driving without a seatbelt. . . not of snakes and spiders." Children have no innate aversion to playing with matches or chasing balls into traffic; instead, a survey of Chicago school kids revealed their greatest fears to be of lions, tigers, and snakes. Many writers of horror fiction draw upon intuitive awareness of our hard-wired terrors. The cosmic entity in Stephen King's IT targets children because, while adults obsess over mundane hazards such as heart attacks and financial ruin, children's fears run deeper and purer.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt