10 Seemingly Harmless Things You Didn't Realise Killed People

9. Ants

Ants kill 30 people a year, so what are the chances of that? Quite low I suppose, since there are over 6-billion people on the planet today. That's doubly surprising when you consider that they spend a lot of their time trying to kill themselves. Who'd have thought they had time to kill anybody, also they're ridiculously small. They really do kill themselves in a ritual known as the Death Spiral. This video proves it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2fFgHUL8Oiw Once they get into that endless circle they can't stop. It's been known for them to walk round and round in their millions until eventually they all die from exhaustion and starvation. These hapless insects habitually follow pheromone trails laid down by other ants, or they simply follow other ants visually. The system works well normally and the method is used very successfully for leading the colony out to find and retrieve food. If they tramp over the same place too much, however, then a loop is initiated and the ants will march ever onward in a circle until they die. There are over 280 different species of ants that can kill and some species, like the Siafu and fire ant can live in colonies up to 20 million strong. Some ants hunt down living prey and overpower it by repeatedly stinging it. Most reports of deaths among people are due to them falling asleep near an ant hill and succumbing to anaphylactic shock from countless ant bites and venom.