Shark Week: what is the most dangerous animal in the world?

Think sharks are scary? Tapeworms and snails kill thousands more people across the world each year

A Great White Shark in South Africa
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Shark Week returns on Sunday with its week-long series of television programmes devoted to sharks. Experts will go on a "life or death" mission to find a giant shark off the New Zealand coast in 'Lair of the Mega Shark' and shark attack survivors will tell their stories in 'I Escaped Jaws 2'. But for all the fascination and fear that sharks inspire, they are far from the deadliest animal on the planet.

"Sharks are wimps," claims Bill Gates, who put together a list of the world's most dangerous animals earlier this year using figures from a range of journals and the World Health Organisation. He acknowledges that the statistics have wide error margins and will differ depending on what parameters you apply, but nevertheless sharks still come pretty low down on the list. In fact they don't even make it into the top ten.

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