When researching deadly animals, this LDS writer was surprised to discover what the deadliest creature on the planet is, but it opened her eyes to some insights about the gospel she'd never considered before.
Much of life’s adversity comes from the way humans frequently mistreat each other. People can be harsh, deceitful, and even predatory. I thought about writing a piece . . . comparing human behavior with some of what we find in the wild.
So I looked up the ten deadliest animals, to see if there’s a parallel. And, as you might expect, I found a predictable list. In the water we find sharks, hippos, and crocodiles happy to take a chunk out of us. On the land, if not careful, we can encounter lions, cape buffalos, elephants, scorpions, and snakes. One site I checked ranked them by the number of deaths caused per year, from the jellyfish that claims 100 lives every year, to the 100,000 people who die from snake bites.
But the deadliest of them all is the one that flies. It can find us anywhere in the world, and it’s the toughest to avoid. Its yearly death toll is higher than all the others put together. It’s also the tiniest animal on the list. It’s the mosquito, transmitting fatal diseases to 700 million people all over the world, and killing 2 to 3 million of us annually.
Instantly I realized that while there are parallels between man and various beasts in the world, only one creature is as insidious as the mosquito: Satan. He can find us in our most remote hiding places, creep through the smallest chinks in our armor, and almost imperceptibly deliver hideous spiritual poison. His followers blanket the earth, search us out and– without roaring, thundering, or splashing– just quietly try to kill us.