While the vast majority of insect and arachnid species are not harmful to humans, it cannot be denied that some arthropod species are downright dangerous. Although experts claim that it is extremely rare for a human to suffer harm from an arthropod’s bite or sting, the millions of Americans that visited emergency rooms between 2010 and 2014 as a result of sustaining arthropod inflicted injuries may disagree with this claim. According to recently compiled data, 6.5 million animal related injuries resulted in emergency room visits and/or hospitalizations during a five year period in the United States. While this amount is strikingly high, what is perhaps most surprising is the fact that half of these cases resulted from injuries inflicted by arachnids and insects. This makes arachnids and insects significantly more dangerous to Americans than dogs, snakes, alligators, mountain lions, bears and all other animals that are known to exist in the United States.
Of the 6.5 million hospital visits that resulted from animal attacks beginning in January 2010 and ending in December of 2014, arachnids and insects were responsible for a whopping 54 percent of them. Spiders, wasps, hornets and bees were the most common culprits in most of these hospital visits. According to Dr. Joseph Forrester, a surgeon at Stanford University, bees, hornets, and wasps are the most dangerous animals that a person can encounter in America. In addition to bugs, dog bites accounted for 26 percent of all hospital visits, placing them in second place behind arthropods. However, most of these cases were emergency room visits, as only three percent of all cases resulted in hospitalizations. Luckily, deaths resulting from animal attacks were low, as only .02 percent of cases ended up being fatal. Most of these deaths resulted from venomous snake and lizard bites. These findings were published in the Trauma Surgery and Acute Care Open medical journal, and the data was provided by the national ER database.
Have you ever known someone who became hospitalized after sustaining injuries in a hornet attack?