Insects were the first few living organisms to have ever walked the planet, but most of us are really not big fans of them. Creepy crawlies scare us, and some of them are actually quiet deadly. Although insects would commonly just runaway when confronted, some of them will bite or attack when threatened.

Below are 7 of the deadliest insects on the planet, and some of them might be found in your back yard.

Hemiptera
Also known as the kissing bugs, they’re considered as “true bugs”. These insects commonly feed on plants, but some species do feed on the blood of large animals. What makes them deadly is that they’re known to transmit the Chagas Disease, which takes time to develop but affects the person’s digestive system, nervous system, and heart.

Asian or Giant Japanese Hornet
These hornets have got to be the stuff of nightmares for most people. They can grow to around 3 inches long and live in nests composing of 20 to 30 individuals. A single sting can hurt a lot because of toxins, which is actually powerful enough to dissolve human tissues, and it’s fatal for those who have allergic reactions. Unlike bee stings, hornets are able to sting repeatedly, adding to their danger factor.

Siafu
Siafu or African Ants may not be as scary when they’re alone, but try taking on twenty million of them. Colonies of these ants have been known to take out vegetation in the African countryside. If they run out of food, the members will stop at nothing to ensure their colony’s survival just to get sustenance. Their bites can cause asphyxiation and 20 to 50 people are reported to die yearly because of these ants.

Wasps

Wasps, in general, are very dangerous. They’re social creatures, living and hunting together. They’re very territorial and protective of their nests. Not to mention that they can sting multiple times since their stingers don’t fall off like bees. Many people are allergic to their stings and there have been some cases where a person died because of one sting.

Locusts
Even the bible says that these insects are dangerous. Although they can’t kill humans directly, these insects are known to wipe out acres and acres of fields of crops. They can strip the land barren and a single swarm, composed of thousands of locusts, can finish off a field in a short amount of time. This results to starvation in the area.

Fire Ants
These ants usually nest in soil or sand, building large mounds and feed on plants and the occasional small insect that comes their way. However, when these ants are bothered, they bite. The sting from their pincers is venomous and results in a burning sensation, hence their name. The bite swells up and becomes more painful. Deaths have been recorded because of these ants and millions of dollars worth in damage in crops.

Mosquitos
They may be tiny, but these bugs are terrible. Since they live off blood, they end up transmitting all sorts of illnesses, specifically Malaria. A huge number of people still get infected, and some die, due to malaria especially in tropical areas.

In 2011, Elizabeth Tibbetts and Michael Sheehan published a study in the journal Science on how some paper wasps learn and recognize the colorful facial patterns of other wasps in the colony, just as humans recognize others people’s faces.

Now they have published new research in the journal Biology Letters that shows that some paper wasps — those that have variable facial patterns recognized by other wasps in the nest — have more acute vision relative to their size than do wasps without variable facial patterns.
“We found convincing evidence that the wasps evolved better vision for the purpose of telling one another apart,” said Dr. Sheehan, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. “This is consistent with the idea that hearing, smelling, seeing or other sensory capabilities in animals, including humans, may have evolved in response to communication signals like we see in the wasp.”

The paper wasps with variable facial patterns are mostly species in which several queens sometimes cooperate to establish a colony, which would make the ability to discriminate among individuals important, he said. Depending on the species, wasps have evolved facial markings that act either like name tags for individual recognition, or like karate belts that indicate a queen’s strength.

“Larger facets in their compound eyes mean better vision, but we found that as these wasps get smaller, they have larger than expected eyes,” Sheehan said. “This demonstrates that they evolved improved acuity relative to size in order to discriminate among different individuals in the colony.”

Like all insects, paper wasps have compound or faceted eyes, each a cluster of thousands of small, telescope-like omatidia with an outer lens that focuses light onto sensory cells inside the eye.

Compound eyes are great for detecting motion — hence a fly’s ability to dodge a swatter — but they provide poor resolution, though larger diameter lenses collect more light and generally provide sharper vision. Many flying insects have a high-acuity zone within the compound eye outfitted with larger diameter lenses and typically facing forward.

Sheehan reasoned that if patterns on the face were important for wasp social interactions, then natural selection might favor wasps that see better, and the lenses in the high-acuity zone on smaller species would be disproportionately larger.

That is what he found when surveying 19 different species of paper wasp in the genus Polistes, half of which were caught in fields around the East and the Midwest, and half obtained from museum collections, some of which were more than 100 years old. While the largest lenses on the eyes of big wasps were the same size — whether or not the wasps could recognize facial patterns — smaller wasps differed. Those with variable facial patterns had larger lenses in their acute zone than those that do not have variable faces.

“This doesn’t overturn evolutionary dogma, but extends the idea that feedback from the environment — in this case, communication signals among members of the same species — can drive change in our senses,” Sheehan said.

Source: Here