[WARNING: arachnophobes beware; this list contains an image of a spider.] Nature provides for almost all of our needs and it is as diverse as the stars in the sky. But there is a dark side too. Nature also contains some of the most awful things you can imagine – worse than anything conjured up by Stephen King! This list looks at ten of those things.
The honey badger is usually found in Africa and Western and Southern Asia. For a number of years the Guinness Book of Records has named it the “most fearless creature”. This animal (which looks deceptively cute) will attack virtually anything and it is smart enough to know its opponents weak spots. For example, when confronted by a human male, it will attack the testicles. This is also one of the few animals that uses tools – for example making use of logs as ladders. The honey badger loves honey and will dive right into a beehive with no regard to its own safety – which unfortunately often leads to its death. Honey Badgers can kill crocodiles, and are very efficient snake killers. It takes only 15 minutes for the animal to eat a 5 foot snake. The ferocity of these creatures is well known in nature and not even a leopard or lion will attempt to kill one.
There is no doubt that the mosquito has to be the worst insect in the world. Just as summer starts, the mosquitos come out in force ready to feast upon the pasty white legs of humans that have been locked inside for winter. At night as you lie in bed you can hear them buzzing but you can’t see them – and then next morning a huge welt appears on the tip of your nose because the mosquito chowed down on it. Oh – and it also happens to be the most deadly insect in the world because it spreads malaria – in fact, it is believed that half the human population that has died through history, died because of the female mosquito bite. God must have been pre-occupied the day he was creating the animals, because he didn’t notice Satan making the mosquito.
Fatal Familial Insomnia is a terrible disease found in only 28 families around the world. The disease prevents you from sleeping and no medication available can help you. When the disease begins, you generally have from 7 to 36 months of sleepless nights until you finally die. Wikipedia describes the stages of the disease thus:
1. The patient suffers increasing insomnia, resulting in panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias. This stage lasts for about four months.
2. Hallucinations and panic attacks become noticeable, continuing for about five months.
3. Complete inability to sleep is followed by rapid loss of weight. This lasts for about three months.
4. Dementia, where the patient becomes unresponsive or mute over the course of six months. This is the final progression of the disease, and the patient will subsequently die.
The bullet ant is ranked as having the most painful sting in the world – often likened to the pain of being shot, described thus: “waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours”. The ant is found in Nicaragua south to Paraguay and, like other ants, they live in large colonies which are usually situated at the base of trees. The ants are used in an initiation rite for boys in the Satere-Mawe tribe of Brazil. The boys are made to wear a glove with hundreds of these ants attached – they must suffer the stings for 10 minutes and they must perform this ritual multiple times. The boys arm is usually paralyzed temporarily from the poison and their bodies can shake for days. You can watch the rite of passage on youtube – I don’t recommend it for the weak of heart.
Also known as kariba weed, the salvinia molesta plant is an aquatic fern from Brazil. It floats on top of water and doubles in size every few days. This usually results in lakes that become completely covered by a mat of the plant up to 24 inches high. The intrusive weed prevents sunlight from entering the water which, in turn, prevents animal and plant life from surviving. To make matters worse, you can’t kill the plant. If you break it into small pieces, each piece will spawn a new plant. In the US attempts have been made to remove it using cranes, but all it takes is one tiny piece to restart the whole growing process. It is now found around the world and causes havoc everywhere it goes. In the image above, what appears to be a nice lawn is actually an entire lake covered with salvinia molesta.
The corpse flower thrives in the grasslands bordering rain forests in Sumatra (though it is now found around the world in display gardens). It grows a single enormous flower which produces a smell that is remarkably similar to a rotting corpse (hence its name). The flower grows to over 10 feet wide and its coloring is designed to mimic the look of rotting meat – to help entice the carrion eating insects that pollinate it. The tip of the corpse flower is nearly the same temperature as the human body which probably helps to spread the stink and adds to the illusion that it is really rotten flesh. Here is an excellent youtube clip with David Attenborough presenting the corpse flower.
It is huge. It has one of the most painful bites in the spider world. It is the most deadly spider; forget the funnel web spider – this thing is dangerous. It has the highest human kill rate in the world. To make things even worse, a bite from this spider causes an erection that lasts for hours. No – this is not a subtle ad for viagra; it really is a side-effect of a wandering spider bite. Emergency room staff are able to immediately recognize a person suffering from a bite. Needless to say, the venom is being studied for possible medical uses for people suffering erectile disfunction. [Youtube Clip]
The Candiru is a small parasitic catfish which is found mostly in the Amazon river where it is the most feared fish – even more so than piranhas. The fish can grow to a maximum length of around six inches. Candiru feed on the blood of their host creatures by swimming into the gills and using razor sharp spines on its head to attach itself. It then chews its way through the host until it reaches a major artery and drinks blood until it is satiated. The fish finds its prey by sniffing the water and this is where it starts to get nasty: the smell of human urine appeals to candirus and they can find their way to a human penis or vagina under the water and enter it. When this happens, the fish attaches itself (causing great pain to the poor human) and it can generally only be removed through surgery. This is a very unpleasant situation to be in – so be warned: don’t pee in the Amazon river. You can watch a youtube clip about the candiru here. And if you are able to cope with disgusting images, check out the photo of a doctor removing a candiru from a man’s nether-regions.
First of all we need to get one thing clear – I am not a “greenie” or an “environmentalist” – but even a hard-hearted non-recycler like me can see how much damage man causes to nature. We pollute our waterways and air, we tear down whole forests, we flatten mountains, and we bury nuclear waste beneath the earth. Nature has every reason to hate us and perhaps that is in part the reason for the many plagues and pandemics that have struck our kind since time immemorial.
Botulinum toxin is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and it is, beyond a doubt, the deadliest known protein. If the clostridium botulinum spores find their way to food or wounds, they will begin to release the toxin which leads to poisoning if eaten. It is so deadly that a mere two pounds (roughly 1kg) of the stuff is enough to kill the entire human population. It is so deadly that it is potentially useful as a biological weapon. This is the kind of thing we obviously want to keep right away from right? Well, no. Millions of people have this deadly protein injected into their face every year; it is present in minute quantities in Botox which is used to “treat” wrinkles.
Contributor: JFrater
When i was about 11 or 12 years old i started walkin on my tip toes on my left and soon couldn’t walk normally. so had an operation after i had botox injected in my leg and 3 year of physiotherapy and 2 year wearing a splint. Im all better but can’t really wear heels
so if i didnt have all that dont i probably wouldnt able to walk now.
Awesome list btw
i missed out *leg* in a sentence woops lol
Wonderful, wonderful list! Seriously…I am going to ***** this one out.
I agree with RambleRon – there should be another of these lists in the future.
@121 duckyjem – very interesting! I’m glad that you are better, and heels are overrated
Of course, I would contend there is a huge difference between using a deadly toxin to help a person’s mobility rather than “improve” their appearance (and let’s face it, lots of people overdo the botox and their faces look frozen).
Great list! What did you mean by this though?
“Fatal Familial Insomnia is a terrible disease found in only 28 families around the world.”
Are you talking about human families?
Also, I am a parasitologist and I have also heard that about half the people who have ever lived died of malaria. Certainly malaria has been the number one killer throughout human history. Not sure where the estimate comes from, but remember that malaria used to be present in the US and other areas where it is no longer endemic.
MichaelGreen: yep – 28 human families have the genetic problem that causes the disease. So while the majority of us are lucky, 28 families suffer the worst disease.
Please don’t show that honey badger video to any southern boyz – next thing you know they’ll be underground badger fights. I can just picture rollin through the trailer park and seeing backyard cages for those damn things.
Wow! That’s really messed up. Talking about bad genes
Imagine that fish, the Honey Badger, the spider and the bullet ant attacking you while you have that Insomnia…that would suck.
the pasty white legs of humans
not all humans have white legs
I read a technical paper on sleep and sleep deprivation once. This article was written quite a few years ago so I’m not sure what might have changed since.
As I remember it, deep sleep only occurs for an hour or two in the middle of the sleep cycle. It is brought on by a secretion of some natural chemical inside the core of the brain, the base (cerebellum?). it has a cumulative effect, meaning you might be able to alter light sleep and REM sleep by setting an alarm to wake up, or a newborn waking up every three hours, but this deep sleep period was required to physiologically process this substance. They found that by getting volunteers to stay up for extended periods, several days in some instances, when they finally were allowed to sleep (of course they were wired to EKG’s or what ever), they had to go through the deep sleep period a proportionally longer time, i.e. if they were up for three days they had to spend three times as much time in the deep sleep phase. I wonder if these families have some defect that wouldn’t allow them to go through this sleep process?
Just a thought.
Very nice list! Maybe i can add one of those crazy fish into the community pool!
AWESOME List. Thant Candiru is creepy. And that Brazilian Wandering Spider is creepier.I wouldn’t want to run into that at night. Funny how such a deadly bacterium can be used to treat wrinkles when injected.
Some of the mosquitoes where I live are huge. The ones that come out at dusk are the worst. They will actually chase you and bite through your shirt and jeans. Using repellant on bare skin only does not work, you have to saturate your clothes as well. Ugh! They’re the spawn from hell!
Fantastic list, by the way. Learned heaps, thanks.
79. bucslim – March 5th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Didn’t realize the honey badger had so much in common with my ex-wife. She attacked my testicles several times when I had cornered her. Come to think of it, she might have easily killed her share of crocodiles too.
Just when I think I´ve had the most god-awful day, I read this and remember what laughter feels like…
——————-
92. Kreachure – March 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“…When you think about it, #2 sort of explains all the previous ones; it’s like nature’s intentionally out to get us…
…and #1 proves we self-destructive idiots deserve it.”
Haha! Exactly what I was thinking as I read the list!
For some reason I thought this would explode into a slanging match of C——-ism v E—–ion. Congratulations for good sense and sorry for mentioning it.
In Korea you have to recycle. There is no option not to.
btw and off-topic: I’m leaving Korea next Friday. The removalists came yesterday and we’re vacating the apartment today. I’ve mentioned this several times along the way in the pointless anouncements forum, so if you have any personal messages for me, go to http://listverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=376.
Well, I won’t go camping.
EVER.
Hey! No Youtube clip on man???? XD
How to fish Candirus? Use a tampon!!!!!! XDXDXD
nicole: seriously? Obviously from my statement in the list I have no idea that anything other than white skin exists.
According to some sources on the web IE articles published there are 40 families with Fatal Familial Insomnia.
astraya: when will you be back online?
tickytic18: maybe the other 12 died of insomnia…
you should make 10 greatest things in nature
jf: I’ll have intermittent access throughout next week. I’m at school today and Monday. We’re couch-surfing with various relatives from tonight to next Thurs. I’ll be able to check in occasionally but it may be short and sweet.
Well friend,your #2 should be a #1 and not only for the nature thing….
“Hmm…how should we prove our manliness?”
“Oh, I know! You know those unimaginably painful stings from that one bug? Let’s fill gloves with them and stick our hands in them ten times risking our physical and mental health! =D”
“AWLRITE! =DD”
Oh humanity.
Oh, also, the Corspe Flower (Titan Arum I believe is its name) is actually thousands of tiny blossoms, if I remember correctly.
The Rafflesia is the largest single-flowering plant, and smells almost as bad as the Titan Arum.
Ugliest Creature in Nature: Platypus
I found myself slightly saddened by the lack of this one. Haha
I thought that the Giant Japanese Hornet would be on the list. The venom from the barbless stinger will dissolve flesh and can be delivered more than once.
I have just marked a worksheet by a Korean student whose name is Hye-na (but would look like) “Hyena” without the apostrophe. She gives her favourite hobby as “eating”.
Jayfray, LOVED IT, LOVED IT, LOVED IT!!! Top list … more, please.
Ive read that the ***** caused by the brazilian wandering spiders bite is actually quite painful. . . . and i dont want to imagine. . . . there is also a video on you tube of one hunting and killing a snake, its awesome.
haha you warn us about the spider…but not the nasty botox injection picture??? haha xD (im terrified of needles…) this was a really intresting list actually…and i watched something on the discovery channel a really long time ago about the bullet ant ritual haha
so what if the wandering spider wanders into the nether regions. the honey badger is a remedy, given the amount of misquitos that tend to gather on pools inside of tires waiting to gather on honey badger backsides . meanwhile, bullet ants have their own wunderlust along the stamen of the corpse flower, while 28 families stay awake during some of our nights, thinking of this all and green goo(aka- kariba weed) vs. grey goo theory. only kariba is fo real yo, and grey goo is just green goo as a theory for what is teresterial and we hope not cosmic, unless we take Mckenna for his word and the spores have the connective way of kudzu along the highway.
ect ect
No stonefish on the list??? I think stonefish is 10 times more nasty than bullet ant…
re: no 10 – this is completely out of context, but am I the only one who ever wondered why animals filmed during the night do not seem bothered by the filming light?
@ geronimo:
The term “man” isn’t just another word for humans of the male gender. It also means human beings..
Just saying.
Here is an interesting fact about the honey badger:
A certain bird (the name escapes me) will employ this animal to help get it some honey. The bird will make a call and the badger will attack the hive, giving the both bird and badger food.
It was on Animal Planet’s Most Extreme
The Botulinum toxin is the most deadly toxin known, but in the most minute amounts is paralyses the muscles as used in cosmetic injections. Only 1 nanogram is enough to kill a person!!
I haven’t enough time to make it through the entire threadie byes before beddie byes, so hope I’m not duplicating.
I imagine the mossies of the northern regions in summer have been mentioned already: Alaska, Spitzbergen (I think), etc.
It was a relief to know the risk of malaria and other mossie-born diseases was considered close to zilch when we holidayed in Costa Rica in 1998. The only time we were seriously troubled was in dryish woodland near the north Pacific coast. Bird watching (twitching) was our main hobby. We’d been told of a good lagoon with a wide variety of water fowl. We had to exit the air-conditioned hire car into the Turkish bath-like open air and climb and descend a mule track. As usual we took the precaution of rubbing repellent on any exposed skin, and covering as much as we could with light clothing. We were puzzled by the sound of telegraph wires. We’d hardly gone more than a few hundred yards from the car, when of a sudden our legs, arms, bodies and faces started to turn black. Soon they were standing two deep on some flesh, evidently revelling in the repellent. Anita screamed and, heat or no heat, we just legged it flat-out back to the hermetically sealed car. We spent the next half hour hunting down and zapping the quantity that had come in with us. They, of course, were the hum of the telegraph wires!
We did both go down with very strange and quite unpleasant symptoms a long while after the holiday, which were never discovered by our competent Chilean doctors, despite exhaustive tests. The effects were quite different for us both: Anita’s like lupus, mine a kind of short-term sleeping sickness (some say they couldn’t tell the difference from my normal self). So who knows?
During a docu about the Siberian gulags, one particular gruesome method of punishment for Soviet dissidents and ‘other criminals’ was described. It was particularly reserved for captured escapees (i.e. all escapees who did not die in the taiga first), but only available in summer. The victim would be stripped naked and tied to a post. Apparently aphylactic shock from mossie bites would kill anyone within 24 hours.
Jilly, (161),
“Here is an interesting fact about the honey badger:
A certain bird (the name escapes me) will employ this animal to help get it some honey. The bird will make a call and the badger will attack the hive, giving the both bird and badger food.
Interesting point.
D’oh! Having just admitted to being a (very low level and very part-time) twitcher, obliges me to finish the info off!
Appropriately, the birds are called honey-guides. Two are specifically involved in honey-badger symbiosis, the black-throated and scaly-throated honey-guides. The latter is extremely rare. They are also employed by humans (or employ humans, if you will). They belong to the wonderfully named genus Indicator. Better still, the black-throated is called Indicator indicator. If subspecies were found, one would be known as Indicator indicator indicator. Hahaha – haven’t we been here before in LV?
And they can also be strapped to the front and rear corners of motor cars.
Oh, Anon, you just beat me by a few minutes! I was going to tell Jilly about the Honey-guides. We were fortunate enough to see them in Namibia, and when we followed them, they led us right to a bee hive! They are very beautiful birds. We were kind of hoping to see a honey-badger, but it wasn’t to be. After seeing that video, I’m kind of glad we didn’t! I never realized they were that vicious.
So, Anon, you are a birder, eh? So am I! I’m sure you see wonderful birds in Chile. I live on the California coast, so we have a lot of cool birds here, too. I have been to Costa Rica and was blissed out by birds the entire time. I have also been to Namibia and South Africa, and the birds were amazing, but so were the animals! We were lucky to be in a group that wanted to look at both. We should talk about birds sometime… I was thinking of starting a forum for birders, but I was afraid nobody would join in. Now I just might do it.
Great List once again JF – BUT!!! Are you serious about No.4??
“The Brazilian Wandering Spider …..It is the most deadly spider; forget the funnel web spider …..It has the highest human kill rate in the world…..”
Check your sources, my friend. The Funnel-Web Spider is THE deadliest on the planet ad number two is The Red-Back (or Jockey) Spider. Surprisingly, the Katipo of New Zealand is Number 3 – but then it IS a relative of Australia’s Red-back.
The only reason the Wandering Spider’s kill rate is higher is due to its being more diversely spread, its affinity to human habitations and the fact that there is, at present, no antidote.
I studied entomology – including arachnids and teach envenomation at Tertiary level. So I know of what I speak.
HIV didn’t make the list?
c: No, the only viruses here are human. Wait, You’re Not Agent Smith!
165. astraya
“And they can also be strapped to the front and rear corners of motor cars.”
When known as Indicator indicator indicator indicator, of course.
astraya,
This non sequitur also belongs in another thread: yours on choral works. However, it might lie there undetected for a good while. So.
It occurred to me that if Thomas Tallis were composing on a modern pc screen, he might need to come up with a work called ‘spam in alium’. (Didn’t the Pythons take up that theme?)
I have to admit that as a filthy-minded, spotty adolescent, when my eyes passed rapidly across a list of such compositions, I initially read it as ‘sperm in alium’
Later on when I matured (hahaha) and became botanically aware, I though it must be a typo for ‘stem in Allium’ (Allium being Latin for onion). As a consequential quasi-Spoonerism Andy Williams becomes windy alliums.
Spem in alium? Here?
P.S. Moving was put in a list of the seven most stressful events in a normal life. Not sure whether being born, dying or confronting trollz on LV was number one.
As a child my brother came down with wound botulism after a ***** pour dentist failed to clean his cavity out before filling it Botulism thrives in places like the inside of a kids tooth. Around an hour after his filling he couldn’t use the side of his mouth, 6 hours after he couldn’t swallow or talk and was on the verge of choaking when he was rushed to the emergency room (when we called the Dentist he said it was a side effect of the numbing medication applied pre cavity proceedure). He spent a month in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit wasting away until they finally discovered what was wrong with him, after which a toxin made from a horse was flowin in and administered in a scene out of a dramatic medical thriller, it was picked up by the doctor at the airport from a private plane and transported in a small crate to the hospital where it was painstakingly removed from the crate and administered (when the vial was removed my dad thought it necessary to tell the MD “just don’t drop it” as if he wasn’t under enough pressure trying to save this 10 year old kid from wasting away due to the fact he was nearly totally paralyzed at that point). A few weeks after the toxin was given he was removed from the intensive care unit and a month after that he was finally allowed to come home. Years later we found that he had one of the unexplainable out of body experiences you hear about in tv specials when he was in a medically induced coma with no brain activity yet had recollection of what occured while technically brane dead. A bizarre and amazing story top to bottom, we are very lucky he is now 23 and finishing up college.
Yeah! Take that nature!
great list woohooo!!!
Lesson learnt: Don’t pee in a river!
You’re not a “greenie”, or “Environmentalist”. You make that sound like an insult. You’re a loser.
hmmm…
to be chained in a room filled with honey badgers, mosquitoes, bullet ants, brazilian spiders and corpse flowers while submerged in water in a waist high barrel filled with candiru.
oh and botox darts in your body every so often.
the perfect torture chamber.
..”God must have been pre-occupied the day he was creating the animals, because he didn’t notice Satan making the mosquito.”… is this an ad of any fanatic creationist group? by the way, creationists are part of mankind, thus fatal for nature, included the rest of intelligent people.
E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N thats the real key.
Actually, there’s 29 cases of fatal familial insomnia. My mom’s friend’s sister (hope you got that) who lives in switzerland (we live in the philippines), has contracted one, unfortunataley she passed away after 6 months of sleeplessness. She already donated her brain for science even before she died, she did that for her children which, sadly, has a 50% chance of progenerating that disease. Poor kids…
8 is juz plain scary….
So human is a good thing? Hitler was an evil man because he lost his war, as did all dictators before him: you are evil when you lose. Hitler killed 6 million people; how many you seattle English/American have killed Native Americans to create your American Dream?. What was the population in North America before the white man came. What about South America with the Spanish/Portuguese conquistadores, and I pass. All in history as accepted and digested. So if you ask me who is the biggest parasit on heart, my answer is the poor *****s who make the thing the way they are: Man!!!!!
This said, I don’t hate you; you just being human.
Have a nice day,
Didier