Top ten deadly creatures

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#5 Golden poison frog

Halfway down our list, like Kermit’s little nephew Robin on the stairs, is a far deadlier amphibian.

The golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis) produces one of the most powerful toxins in the animal kingdom. The poison is secreted through the frog’s skin, and used by native South American Indians to poison-tip darts used to fend off Sting (Gordon Sumner). Although the highly toxic poison is lethal to most humans, Sting has built up a resistance over the years.

#4 Sea Wasp

The mindless and useless sea wasp, a Box jellyfish which earned its name for being as annoying and despised as its yellow-jacketed namesake. The sea wasp (Chironex fleckeri) is one of the larger Box jellyfish, it has 10ft long tentacles covered in venomous barbed stings which cause intense pain and cardiac arrest. Swimmers who get a taste of the sea wasps barbs have been known to have a heart attack and sink to the bottom of the ocean before managing to reach the shore, such is the rapid effect of the deadly venoms.

#3 Mosquito

The dreaded skeeter, one of the most hated insects on the planet, and usually just for leaving annoying, itchy, red welts. But the mosquito is much worse than a few itchy spots, the infuriating and puny little insect is responsible for deaths of up to 2 million people a year.

The little beggars transmit a selection of foul viruses and parasites. You can breathe a sigh of relief, mosquitoes are not thought to be able to transmit HIV, but they do infect people with tasty delights such as yellow fever, dengue fever and malaria. And if you’re really lucky you could just be infected with Lymphatic filariasis, the parasite which causes elephantiasis, and end up with a set of gonads like this chap, or even this chap.

#2 Japanese puffer

The Japanese puffer is not another bizarre fetish borne out of nuclear annihilation, but eating it possibly is. The Japanese came up with the brilliant idea of eating highly poisonous fish. Known as fugu, the fish must be prepared by highly skilled and licensed chefs who remove the most toxic organs from the fish. Some poison still remains in the fish’s flesh, which is said to cause a tingling sensation on the tongue.

People do still die every year when chefs don’t get their gutting just right, a nick in the liver or testes can spill too much poison onto the edible parts, and no antidote is available.

The tetrodotoxin contained in the poison causes paralysis, anyone unfortunate enough to receive a lethal dose remains fully conscious as their muscles stop working and they asphyxiate.

#1 Candiru

And here, our prize, the candiru or vampire fish. This tasty little number is a parasitic fish from South America, it’s usual host would be a catfish, the candiru slides between the fish’s gills and uses spines on its head to latch itself in position whilst it drinks the hosts blood.

The parasite is said to seek out the catfish gills by sniffing out urea, but when humans urinate whilst in freshwater rivers the candiru supposedly swims up the man’s urethra and digs its spines in. Obviously a 10cm long fish up the Jap’s eye is going to be uncomfortable to say the least, and without surgical removal only a slow agonising death awaits. Or so the story goes.

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