10 Animals That Can Kill You: A Practical Safety Guide

There are plenty of ways to die out there. The odds of an animal being responsible are slim, but that does not mean you should wander through the wild carefree. Understanding which creatures pose genuine threats and how they behave can mean the difference between a good story and a trip to the hospital.

Yukon wildlife biologist Dr. Michelle Oakley and National Geographic Explorer Filipe DeAndrade have spent years working around dangerous wildlife. They have seen what happens when people underestimate animals that would rather avoid us entirely. Here are ten creatures that can kill you and how to stay out of their way.

The Australian Magpie

Some birds would happily eat you if you were already dead, but can a bird actually kill a human? The Australian magpie tops this list as one of the most feared creatures in Australia.

"They're just trying to protect their nest and their chicks," says Oakley. "They're going to come down if they think you're a threat, and they're going to hit you with everything they got."

Bird attacks on humans are becoming more common in urban areas. The magpie knows who you are and will attack you at the same time and in the same place every single day. Cyclists wear helmets with big eyes painted on them to scare birds away. Some attach spikes or zip ties to create obstacles. It can be dangerous if you are not steady on your bike. Magpies have been known to take out an eye or two, and in 2019 a man died while trying to avoid a swooping magpie on his bicycle. The swooping season lasts only a few weeks during nesting season in spring. If you are traveling through a known magpie area, be prepared.

The Cassowary

When we start talking about deadly birds, we need to talk about the cassowary. Native to Australia and Papua New Guinea, this creature reminds us of when the planet was full of animals that could really kill you.

"It's kind of like a scene out of Jurassic Park," DeAndrade says. "This thing is like a hybrid between a terror bird and a velociraptor."

"Birds really are dinosaurs, and there's none that's more dinosaury than the cassowary," Oakley adds. "It's 6 feet tall, it's got all these bright colors, it's got a big dinosaur casque on its head."

Guinness World Records named the cassowary the world's most dangerous bird. They have 5-inch daggers on their inner claws, and they will jump up and kick and disembowel you. These birds can almost outrun a horse. In Australia, there has been only one recorded death from a cassowary, but over 150 attacks have been reported. The Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission has classified these birds alongside alligators due to their unpredictable nature.

In April 2019, a man was killed by his pet cassowary after he fell near their enclosure. "It's not necessarily out to get you," DeAndrade explains. "But if an animal of that size doesn't want you anywhere around it, you should listen to it."

The Kangaroo

This bouncy marsupial can be surprisingly hostile. "I love how kangaroos have this mousey cute head, they're like 'Hi, I'm a cute mouse,' but I will kill you with everything else," Oakley says.

Kangaroos are the ultimate Australian athlete. They can reach about 6 feet tall, have a 9-foot vertical jump, and broad-leap around 30 feet. Some male kangaroos look like muscle-bound bodybuilders.

They will literally box with you. Kangaroos sit back on their tails, freeing up both hands for fighting and their feet for kicking. Their massive feet hide long claws sharp enough to tear an opponent's gut wide open.

In one incident, Debbie Urquhart was attacked by a wild kangaroo while running in Australia. "He had me pinned to the ground and he was jumping at me and scratching me," she said. She needed 35 stitches.

Males are often the problem. They fight each other for mates and can break ribs. Humans in an upright stance appear aggressive to kangaroos, so they treat us the same way they treat rival males. Kangaroos are responsible for more deaths in Australia than snakes, crocodiles, and sharks combined. The reason is car strikes. Thousands of roos die on Australian roads every year, and sometimes the collisions kill people too.

The Dolphin

We like to think of dolphins as cuddly creatures because they have that permanent smile. "Most people imagine dolphins to be really smart, really sweet, they're trying to save us all the time," Oakley says. But for prey species, dolphins are formidable predators.

Dolphins can bite, slap you with their tails, and ram you. They can be quite big. "We forget that they're like 1,000 pounds. I mean, that's the size almost of a horse," Oakley points out.

In captivity, things get complicated. "When you have a really intelligent animal with a complex social structure, they also get moods," Oakley explains. Tourism and swimming with captive dolphins creates situations where things can go wrong. Much of the aggression in captive settings comes from pent-up testosterone. Males are trying to find mates, and when you put them in a small pool with tourists, the results can be dangerous.

"A dolphin could absolutely kill you, just as a shark could," DeAndrade says. "Do they want to? Absolutely not. We're not on their menu." There have been no documented cases of dolphins causing human deaths. Bottlenose dolphins are among the very few wild creatures that kill for reasons other than hunger, having been known to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds without eating them.

The Killer Whale

The largest dolphin in the world is the orca, and it can kill you.

"These marine mammals outpower, outsize even the animals that we think of at the top of the food chain," DeAndrade says. "They are highly intelligent creatures working together to take down whales, even other dolphins, even sharks."

"These guys are 6 tons, 25 feet long, and I mean designed for destruction," Oakley describes.

Orcas can hunt using many different tactics. They can strand feed by rushing the banks to hunt penguins or seals. They can tail-whip schools of herring. They can knock seals off icebergs by creating waves. Recent discoveries show orcas killing great white sharks, which puts them at the very top of the ocean food chain.

"If we could see an orca out of the water and look at 6 tons of muscle and all these teeth, I don't think we'd ever think about getting close to them," Oakley says.

There are no known cases of an orca killing a person in the ocean. "We have not been on their menu," DeAndrade explains. "We're bony, we don't have the fat structure that they need to survive." But in captivity, the story is different. Four people have been killed by captive orcas.

The Gorilla

"Smarter animals can be more deadly because they're thinking one step ahead of you sometimes," Oakley says.

"I think gorillas just kind of see us as a less evolved primate," DeAndrade offers. "When we're in the jungles, when we're in their territory, we don't look like we know what we're doing.