Sometimes beauty is only skin deep – or fur deep, as it is for many of these deceptively cute and cuddly creatures. The natural world is full of soulful eyes, scratchable chins and pattable paws, but a lot of those paws can spring claws if you're not on your guard – from the mighty predators of the African savannah to animals you might find in your front room.
Click through this gallery to see the world's cutest and deadliest animals – from a safe distance...
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, more people are injured every year in the state by moose than by bears. These usually docile herbivores seem unlikely candidates for violence, but moose can attack if they're stressed, surprised or protecting their young. And if a bull moose does decide to charge you, that's up to 725kg (1,600lbs) of solid sinew and antler heading your way at up to 35 miles per hour (55km/h). Very much unlike bears, it is a good idea to run from a moose charge, as they're unlikely to follow you far.
Pandas are deeply incompetent creatures. Their survival rests entirely on a single food source, videos of their clumsy behaviour fill the internet and they require constant coaxing by conservationists to even breed. Nevertheless, they're still bears, and when provoked they can scratch and bite with the best of them. A panda in Beijing Zoo named Gu Gu has made headlines on three separate occasions for mauling trespassers in his enclosure – hospitalising all three men with vicious bites to the legs.
Unpuffed pufferfish are among the cutest residents of the reef, with googly eyes and big broad smiles, but you wouldn't like them when they're angry. Just like Bloat in Pixar's Finding Nemo, real-life puffers inflate themselves into spike-covered spheres when threatened, and as a backup plan they're also extremely poisonous. Even in death they can be dangerous. Pufferfish are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, but if not prepared correctly they can flood your veins with a toxin up to 1,200 times stronger than cyanide.
The duck-billed platypus is simply inexplicable. You may know that it's the world's only mammal that lays eggs instead of birthing live young. You may know that it has a beaver-like tail and a duck-like bill instead of teeth. You may even know that it sweats milk and glows luminously under UV light. But we're guessing you didn't know that male platypuses have venomous spurs attached to their hind legs. The venom is non-lethal, but unless you enjoy "excruciating pain that cannot be relieved with conventional painkillers", maybe stay out of their way.
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We're being a little unfair using a picture of a well-groomed Labrador, but man's best friend is statistically one of his greatest enemies. Any postman can tell you that dogs aren't always the warmest hosts, but we'd bet even they would be surprised to learn that dogs account for anywhere between 25,000 and 59,000 human deaths per year (estimates vary greatly). According to the World Health Organization, dogs account for 99% of all animal-to-human rabies transmissions, while dog bites account for tens of millions of injuries annually.
Picture the scene: you're stranded on a riverbank in the East African savannah, aware that deadly wildlife lurks in the water and on land. What animal are you most worried about? The answer should be hippos, as their 500 annual fatalities put them alongside dogs and elephants as the world's deadliest mammals. They have wide smiles and plant-based diets but are also fiercely territorial, and will suddenly ambush interlopers from beneath the waterline. They boast the strongest bite of any land animal, and can easily outrun humans despite their lumbering frames.
It's hard to feel intimidated by a giant anteater because it looks... quite silly? The elongated snout, minuscule ears and eyes and shaggy striped coat all seem more comical than menacing. But the laughter stops abruptly when an anteater gets annoyed – the animal rears up onto its hind legs and spreads its forelimbs to the side, universal body language for 'come at me'. That's your cue to leave, as an anteater's claws can do serious damage, and there are unfortunately at least two human fatalities on record.
The most dangerous animal you've probably never heard of, this shaggy mammal looks far too hungover to pose a serious threat, but in parts of Asia it is even more feared than the tiger. Fewer than 20,000 of these bears remain in the jungles of India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, but they're notorious for attacking out of the blue and kill dozens of people each year. A recent study argues that this 'aggression' is actually a defensive pattern of behaviour built up over centuries of living alongside tigers – their only natural predators.
Seals are regular guests on David Attenborough's wildlife programmes – but in different settings they play opposite roles. In the Arctic, viewers ooh and aah as adorable seal pups evade the attacks of orcas and polar bears. But in the Antarctic they generally play the villains, as leopard seals hunt down and devour penguins to the sound of screeching strings. Fortunately leopard seals rarely come into contact with humans, but there has been one fatality – a researcher was killed while snorkelling in Antarctica in 2003.
American football player Tyrann Mathieu is nicknamed 'the honey badger' thanks to his ferocious on-field play and never-say-die attitude. The nickname probably flatters him, as the real-life honey badger once held an official Guinness World Record for 'most fearless animal'. Resistant to venom, they prey on puff adders and Cape cobras, and will cheerfully charge any animal of any size, including leopards and lions. They'd happily attack the king of the jungle, so it goes without saying they'd attack you too.
A widely-circulated online statistic claims that "cows kill more people every year than sharks". It's usually wheeled out in defence of sharks rather than to characterise cows as killers, but it still raises some important questions for local farms. Fact checkers have verified the claim: sharks typically claim between five and 10 lives each year, while cow-related fatalities tend to be in double figures. Most of these cases come from altercations with bulls and involve blunt-force trauma.
If you're ever going to find a snake cute – which we accept you may not – it will probably be this one. With its tiny little head and bejewelled patterning, this dinky snake scrubs up beautifully, but it also boasts one of the most potent venoms in North America. Particularly problematic is its resemblance to the harmless scarlet kingsnake, and cases of mistaken identity happen semi-regularly. The good news is that corals are extremely shy and their tiny mouths struggle to penetrate clothing. Antivenom is widely available, and only one person has been killed by a coral in the last 50 years.
Visually – and we stress, only visually – these Australian canines would fit in at your local park. Most Aussies know to treat dingoes like the wild animals they are, but tourists sometimes feed and take selfies with them, dangerously habituating them to humans. Dingo attacks remain very rare, but they've developed an upsetting reputation as potential child killers. In one notorious 1980 incident, a woman was convicted of the murder of her child after blaming a dingo for the killing, popularising the phrase "A dingo ate my baby!" An inquest later found that a dingo had indeed taken the infant.
The world's frowniest fish, we're including this otherwise-ugly animal based on its endearingly dour expression. We'd be grumpy too if we spent our entire lives lurking on the seabed pretending to be a rock, but the stonefish wreaks a terrible revenge; it is the single most venomous fish in the ocean. It doesn't attack humans but its consummate camouflage means it's easily stepped on, and the 13 spines down its back are loaded with toxins. Severe stings can kill, and one victim described a pain akin to "the wrist, elbow and shoulder being hit in turn with a sledgehammer over the course of an hour".
Do you remember the scene in Austin Powers in which an enemy goon stands transfixed in front of an oncoming bulldozer, before the bulldozer ever-so-slowly runs him down? Well, the slow loris is the bulldozer of the Southeast Asian jungle: potentially deadly if it gets hold of you, but sufficiently plodding that you should just move out of the way. With an average speed just above that of a sloth, this disarmingly doleful critter boasts a venomous bite that can kill if left untreated. It is the only venomous primate in the world.
If you were to ask an AI to generate a picture of a cute animal without any further instructions, it would probably show you a picture of a cat. Which is in some ways unfortunate, because evolution has shaped even your sweetest local tabbies into merciless killing machines. One 2013 study estimated that domestic cats kill up to 22 billion mammals annually, and bigger cats kill bigger things. Tigers have been repeatedly voted the world's favourite animals, but despite their dwindling numbers they still account for between 50 and 100 human fatalities each year.
We're including lions because they're undeniably cute and undeniably dangerous, but in reality they perhaps claim fewer lives than their reputation suggests. Estimates vary but most sources agree that lions kill between 100 and 200 people a year – a lot for sure, but fewer than several of their herbivorous colleagues in the African savannah, including elephants, hippos and buffalo. Their killer credentials are inflated by the notorious tale of the Man-Eaters of Tsavo, a pair of males who killed dozens of Kenyan railway workers back in 1898.
Leopards complete our trio of dangerous big cats. Comfortably the smallest of the three but by far the most common, leopards are adept at living alongside humans and are sometimes seen prowling suburban streets in India and Nepal. Estimates vary but they certainly have a lower body count than lions, even though there are similar tales of historic man-eaters said to have hundreds of kills to their names. In case you're wondering, jaguars and cheetahs are comparatively un-dangerous to humans. Jaguars avoid people and attacks are exceptionally rare, while there are precisely zero recorded attacks by cheetahs in the wild.
The average adult human weighs roughly the same as 31 black-footed cats, so we're not claiming that this pocket-sized puss poses any threat to people. But we're including it anyway to demonstrate just how chillingly efficient cats are at ending lives. The black-footed cat has eyes that could melt every glacier in Greenland, but it also hunts its prey in southern Africa with an astonishing 60% success rate – the highest of any solo mammal. It kills between 10 and 14 rodents, birds and insects every night, before returning to its burrow looking angelic as could be.
We can feel the scepticism radiating through your screen, but unfortunately we have tragic evidence that beavers should be handled with care. They can be extremely aggressive when defending their territory, and in 2013 a 60-year-old fisherman in Belarus died after a beaver bit into an artery in his leg. The animals can also carry rabies, and rabid beaver attacks include the mauling of an 83-year-old woman in Virginia in 2012 and an assault on a boy scout leader swimming in the Delaware River in 2013.
With their adorable eight-ball eyes and oddly sad expressions, these tiny amphibians come in all the colours of the rainbow and are reliable crowd-pleasers in zoos. They're also probably the single most poisonous animals on Earth, and the deadliest subspecies possesses a toxin strong enough to instantaneously stop a human heart. That won't happen to you unless you eat them – inadvisable for many reasons – but most of the frogs also secrete toxins through their skin, so it's best to steer clear altogether.
Kangaroos are nurturing parents and seem perfectly lovable to non-Australians. But one of Australia's national symbols is a roo wearing boxing gloves, and locals know that their muscular physiques and macho sensibilities make them powerful adversaries. Kangaroos attack humans the same way they do other kangaroos – biting, grappling and kicking with both legs – and if you see a male standing tall, eyeballing you and pawing at the ground, take the hint and leave. Deaths are very rare – in 2022 a 77-year-old man in Western Australia died after an attack, the first fatality in the state since 1936 – but roo-related incidents are on the rise as humans encroach further into their habitats.
It’s hard to imagine any malice lurking behind those button eyes, but koalas have sharp claws and uneven tempers. Leave them alone and they'll do you the same courtesy, but a hassled koala can turn in an instant. In 2022 an enraged koala knocked down a woman in Queensland who strayed a little too close, just months after a child was similarly set upon while out on a bushwalk. Incidentally, the name 'koala bear' is a misnomer; koalas are marsupials, and have more in common with kangaroos and possums than they do with bears.
The sea is not a very cute place. Evolution does things differently there, and fins, gills and scales are less attractive than paws, whiskers and fur. But the blue dragon, a sea slug found in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, is certainly visually appealing – an elegant collage of frills and brilliant-blue shades that look almost like they're painted on ceramic. Unfortunately, it can also hospitalise you. The slug stores stinging nematocysts from the creatures it consumes, and then unleashes them on anything foolish enough to touch it.
With fluffy fur and snuffly snouts, wild boar are quite a bit cuter than their farmyard cousins, and thrive in forests the world over thanks to their typically piggish propensity to eat almost anything. Environmentalists herald their revitalising effect on woodland, but a full-grown male outweighs an adult human and can level a life-threatening charge. A 2023 report counted 172 human deaths at the hands of wild hogs between 2000 and 2019 – an average of 8.6 annual fatalities across 29 countries. They join sharks in the cows-kill-more-than-them column, but ramblers in hog country should stay wary nonetheless.
With luscious fur, scratchable ears and dinner-plate eyes, polars bears tick all the boxes of conventional cuteness, but we're not sure there's an animal on Earth it's less advisable to pet. The males are the world's biggest bears – up to 650kg (1,500lbs) of claws, teeth and muscle – and their fiercely predatory nature makes them extremely dangerous. Without bear spray or a very large gun, there isn't much you can do to deter an attack. Remember the old adage: "If it's black fight back, if it's brown lie down, if it's white goodnight."
This teeny-tiny sea creature is pretty as a picture, with psychedelic blue-black rings and a yellow-orange tint. You could fit four of them in the palm of your hand, but you would do so at your peril, as each animal comes equipped with enough venom to kill you and 25 others. Social media videos show people picking up these octopuses to examine their bright patterns, but their colouring is meant as a warning, not an invitation. Bites are rare but there have been a handful of fatal encounters – and the toxin has no known antidote.
No, your local bin racoon isn’t going to come for you in the night – but the diseases it carries just might. These urban pests are often found in disused attics, under porches or huddled in chimneys across North America, and will happily scratch and bite if angered. More importantly, they carry a number of pathogens you've heard of (rabies, roundworm) and several more you probably haven't (leptospirosis, giardiasis, tularemia). Experts advise that no one should handle racoons or their waste without protection and appropriate training.
Lizards are probably the cutest class of reptile, though with snakes and crocodiles providing the main competition it's a low bar. Attractive orange splashes and an ever-present slight smile make gila monsters charming little creatures if you can overlook their forked tongues, but try to be charmed at a distance. America's only venomous lizards, local legends hold that they have deadly breath, spit poison and can jump several feet in the air. Experts are sceptical, but their bite is unquestionably toxic and causes long-lasting and extreme pain.
The direct ancestors of today's domestic dogs, wolves look profoundly pettable when they're feeling friendly, but, unlike many entries on this list, people are almost too aware of their dangers. US president Teddy Roosevelt called them "beasts of waste and destruction" and stories like Little Red Riding Hood have characterised them as cunning killing machines. Between 2002 and 2020 researchers found 26 fatalities globally, 14 of which were due to rabies. The risk of wolf attack is clearly not zero, but their bloodthirsty reputation is somewhat exaggerated.
Now discover the deadliest American animals you wouldn't want to run into