What is the most dangerous insect?

[Beetle]

Probably fleas are somewhere near the top of the list because of the medival and earlier plagues.

[coinbird]

I found your thread after searching about the Siafu ants I saw on discovery channel. My stepbrother returned from Zimbabwe last month and said that the locals were talking about the "poison AIDS spider" that was proliferating in the area. The name she said they had for it sounded like "Chuchink-weese" (cha-chunk weese?) I haven't been able to find more information about this on the web, but he recalled that its chelicerae are effectively disease carrying needles (hollow fangs) whilst the pedipalps (spongelike) had some characteristic that preserves the HIV virus, which usually dies very quickly in most environments. Pretty scary.

-Bronson

[MrMistery]

Really? I thought HIV couldn't use athropods as vectors. We have an expert on virology on the site. Victor?

[byungminsa]

What about flies, where ever there is disease and pestilence, there is always flies and you can never kill them all. It's not like pokemon.

[MrMistery]

I don't know if they are the most dangerous, but they are deffinetly the most annoying insects. Always buzzing around and disturbing me from my studying...

[shanec14]

What is the one type of ant that lves in the rain forest and moves about once a day into a new part of the forest because they have a colony of about 10 million at a time. When they move they cover about a mile in one day and they exhaust all the food sources in that area. they kill anything that gets in thier way and they will eat it all.

[MrMistery]

There are more species you might be reffering to. Are you talking about the traveler ant?

[Super Grendel]

I literally joined this site just to join this discussion!

and I myself have a question:

Do the SIAFU have any natural preditor? with the mecha-killers they are made out to be on the television it seems they would easily ruin any ecosystem they are a part of. If they do not have any preditors what natural occurance keeps thes top preditors in line?

[chicoguardian]

I think it depends on what insect you look at, any insect could carry a desiese, though this happens, humans are the cause as well, for insects carrying deseases by throwing trash out into land fills and such.

[MrMistery]

@super grendel
the food
If too many baby siafu are born, they will not have enough things to eat and die... This is known as the bottle neck effect in genetics

[Super Grendel]

Mr Mistery you sure know a lot about insects so I will ask a more difficult question (one I have also been wanting to know the answer to). Why is it that ants and termites fight so ferociously? Termites like to burro in trees and other wooden objects while ants dig holes in the ground so they can't fight over territory. Termites mainly eat wood and ants have a large diet (that does not include wood) so the cannot be fighting over natural resources. It would be an extremely bad idea for ants to fight termites for food, they tend to loose many of there own in the process. So what exactly are they fighting over?

[amoebapower]

ive heard that the tse tse fly delivers a sickness called sleeping sickness and it ususally kills people. however, they live in in africa so chances are Ill never come into contact with them