The Animal Most Likely to Kill You in Each State

Being aware of your own mortality can get a person thinking. It's usually not about things we can actually control—like improving our diets to help stave off heart disease, the nation's reigning killer—but things we can't, like a swarm of bees coming to inject us with venom until we expire. Helpfully, the people over at LCB have compiled a chart detailing which animal is most likely to end your life in your home state.

As you can see, most humans who have a fatal run-in with another species will be battered or half-chewed by large mammals. Horses, cows, and deer are to be respected and avoided whenever possible. In the northeast, dog attacks lead the way. In California, you stand a better chance of being bit by a venomous snake than a canine. In Tennessee, spiders are the primary suspect.

Globally, things look a little different.

Humans are to be avoided at all costs, along with mosquitoes. But snails? While 200,000 is a pretty liberal estimate, it's true that some snails in freshwater parts of Africa harbor a parasite that can burrow into human hosts and cause a potentially deadly infection known as schistosomiasis.

The moral of the story: Don't pet anything that doesn't belong to you.

This story originally ran in 2018; it has been updated for 2021.