I will be the first to admit, I have an irrational fear of sharks. I’ve never even seen Jaws or any of its sequels, but the amount of attacks we hear about from the news, including the one that just happened in North Carolina on June 14, is enough to keep me out of the ocean. Just the thought of something so large, and so destructive looming in the ocean with its 15 rows of razor-sharp teeth gives me nightmares of being stranded in the open sea with a group of hammerheads circling me. Any animal than can smell blood from a ridiculous distance away in an environment as unpredictable as the ocean should spark fear, right? But are my fears unfounded? Are there other beasts in the animal kingdom I should be more afraid to cross?

According to Christopher Ingraham of the The Washington Post, there are plenty of other animals out there that are much more deadly than the great white. Compiling data on death records from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Wonder Database, Ingraham was able to find the average animal-associated deaths in the United States between the years 2001 and 2013. For Ingraham, it was not a matter of putting shark attacks into perspective by comparing how many people die from other causes, like heart disease, but rather comparing shark-related deaths to deaths caused by other animal attacks. He also created maps based on this data of where these deadly animals reside, and the places where these deaths most frequently occurred.

So who else out there could possibly be more threatening than Steven Spielberg’s leading death machine? The answer may surprise you. Click “view slideshow” to learn more.

sharks
A new game by Tripwire Interactive lets you play as a shark tasked with taking revenge on a human that killed its mother. Guillaume Baviere, CC BY-SA 2.0.