It is advantageous for most animals to look a lot scarier than they are. Wherever you are in the food chain, you want to seem like a difficult and dangerous meal, and some of nature's gnarliest nasties have spent millions of years evolving their fear factor. But beyond the bared fangs, cruel claws and dripping mandibles, many of these creepy critters are all sizzle and no steak.
Click through this gallery to see the terrifying animals that aren't nearly so dangerous as they look...
Various fantasy authors have played with the image of a cloaked spectre gliding through the dark, and manta rays are basically underwater dementors with massive skeletal mouths. These gargantuan creatures can grow up to 29 feet (9m) across – that's roughly the length of a double-decker bus – but fortunately they're docile filter feeders that pose no risk to humans. The rays got their name because 'manta' means 'blanket' in Spanish – a surprisingly cuddly etymology for these otherwise foreboding fish.
An inch and a half of pure terror, tailless whip scorpions trigger our fight or flight response at a deep, deep level. Giant pincers: check. Eight spindly legs: check. A tendency to lurk in the damp and the dark: check. The word 'scorpion' also does little to settle the nerves, but fortunately these icky arachnids aren't scorpions at all, belonging to their own order – amblypygi. They're also big sissies underneath all the armour. Found in tropical regions worldwide, they have no venom or stinger and avoid humans like the plague. The worst they can do is deliver very light puncture wounds with their pincers – which they will only do as a last resort.
When crocodiles first evolved, the dinosaurs still walked the Earth, and they inspire an instinctive, almost ancestral fear. It is perhaps surprising, then, that there's a species of crocodilian that grows up to 20 feet (6m) long, sports rows of razor-sharp teeth and poses no threat to humans at all. Gharials inhabit the rivers of India and Nepal and boast unusually long and narrow snouts, which they sweep from side to side to catch fish. These picky pescatarians are shy and do not attack people – in fact it's humans that are dangerous to them. Habitat destruction and overfishing has spurred a 98% population loss over the last century, driving these gentle giants to the brink of extinction.
Red on black, venom lack; red on yellow, kill a fellow. This catchy rhyme is supposed to help residents of the southeastern United States tell the difference between harmless scarlet kingsnakes and ultra-venomous coral snakes. This little guy is clearly showing red on black, so there's nothing to fear, but we would strongly advise against handling wild snakes based on this rhyme. Some coral snakes lack yellow bands – so red touches black by default – and it still rhymes if you misremember the colours. Was it 'red on yellow' or 'black on yellow'? And how much are you willing to risk to find out?
Serrated teeth protruding from gaping jaws, slit-like eyes that swivel in their sockets, a pointed dorsal fin atop a hulking form: everything we know about nature tells us to avoid this animal at all costs. But don't judge this book by its razor-toothed cover. Found in coastal waters across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, sand tigers are docile sharks that will only attack if directly threatened, and have accounted for precisely zero human fatalities since records began. Ironically, the sand tiger shark looks far scarier than the actual tiger shark – a completely different species that genuinely is dangerous to humans.
While the sand tiger shark is overtly menacing, the basking shark is more eerie – a giant shape gliding through the murky water mouth-first. The world's second largest fish, the basking shark's gaping maw looks very Jonah and the Whale, but these slow-moving filter-feeders mostly eat plankton and are actively non-aggressive. The sharks earn extra fear points for lingering near the surface of seas where large sharks are otherwise absent. Imagine paddle-boarding in the English Channel when suddenly a fin the size of a wardrobe starts slicing towards you.
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In some parts of Madagascar, locals live in fear of meeting the aye-aye's piercing yellow gaze. Tradition dictates that these nocturnal lemurs are harbingers of death, disease and crop failure, and entire villages will sometimes relocate if an aye-aye comes to town. Unfortunately, this leads some Malagasy to kill the animal on sight – desperately dangerous for a species not found anywhere else on Earth. Aye-ayes are now protected by law, but in remote forest regions their ominous reputation persists. They're certainly spooky, with bat-like ears, rodent teeth and long, bony middle fingers, but they pose zero threat to humans – either physically or spiritually.
Everyone knows that big cats are dangerous, and tigers and lions should be top of your avoid list. But while these two kings of the jungle kill hundreds of people a year, the slightly-less-big cats are much less deadly. Leopards are smaller and more timid, but are much more common and still regularly take lives. Jaguars are huge, powerful predators but take care to avoid humans and attacks are exceedingly rare, while cougars claim roughly one life per decade. But it's cheetahs that have the cleanest record, without a single verified attack on a human in the wild. We still wouldn't advise going in for a stroke.
Killer whales have a nasty reputation, and, frankly, they deserve it. These sadistic cetaceans are known to toy with dying seals just for sport, employ frighteningly intelligent hunting strategies and, recently, have begun sinking sailing yachts off the Spanish coast by ramming them repeatedly. Various urban legends paint them as bloodthirsty butchers, encouraged by the high-profile killings of four people by orcas in captivity. But despite all this – and despite plenty of opportunity – there have been no verified cases of killer whales launching sustained attacks on humans in the wild. Orcas are fussy eaters, and they hunt what they've been taught to hunt. Fortunately that doesn't include us. Yet.
In the classic 1851 novel Moby Dick, a vengeful sperm whale terrorises the seven seas by smashing up boats, biting off limbs and dragging sailors to their doom. The whale was loosely based on a real animal – 'loosely' because the whale's behaviour was wildly implausible. Unlike most cetaceans sperm whales do hunt prey and boast jaws filled with intimidating teeth, while there are a handful of accounts of them (possibly accidentally) ramming small ships. But the whales are shy, docile creatures who have no record of, or interest in, attacking humans, and will sometimes welcome divers into their pods for hours at a time.
A Frankenstein's monster of horrible bugs, the common scorpion fly boasts the spindly legs of a spider, the protuberant snout of a mosquito, the black-and-yellow colouring of a wasp and, of course, the curled-up stinger that gives it its name. Except it doesn't really have any of these things – its stinger does not sting, and is instead used for mating, while its beak is never turned against humans. It's barely even yellow, and some individuals sport a shade closer to pale green. Scorpion flies live on all six inhabited continents and are rarely remarked upon, as few people look closely enough to distinguish their body parts.
Bullsnakes do a great job of pretending to be scarier than they are. They hiss loudly, and curve their bodies into an S-shape as if coiled to strike. They may even thrash about while vibrating their tails, behaviour that sees them mistaken for the western rattlesnake, a species that is dangerous and will try to kill you if you catch it on a bad day. Despite all this posturing, these North American snakes are non-venomous and will only bite if severely provoked – which few people are brave enough to do, since they also grow up to eight feet (2.5m) long.
There's something about the giant isopod that makes our skin crawl. A case study in 'deep-sea gigantism', these cold-water critters can grow up to 16 inches (40cm) long, with a segmented body, twitching antennae and a writhing mass of legs. They're notorious for attacking trawl nets, but they're timid by nature and survive by scavenging. They also live between 550 and 7,000 feet (170 and 2,100m) down, so human encounters are rare. If you were to find yourself marooned thousands of feet underwater without the protection of a reinforced submersible, a few nibbles from a passing isopod would be the least of your worries.
Bats occupy a strange place in the cute animal hierarchy. They have button eyes, fluffy bodies and social temperaments, but their rubbery wings, pointed teeth and entirely fictional reputation for getting tangled in your hair make them more ick than tick for many. Vampire bats come across particularly badly: they earn their name by sucking the blood of other animals, while their upturned snouts and jutting fangs give them obvious fear factor. But despite uncharitable depictions in horror movies, the bats are nature's gentlest carnivores. They can feed harmlessly on an animal for 30 minutes without it even noticing, and bite humans extremely rarely.
Eight is the universally-agreed-upon scariest number of legs – especially when they're hairy and three inches (7cm) long. Huntsman spiders are particularly common in Australia, where Mother Nature is not at her friendliest, but they're actually one of the country's less dangerous species. They avoid confrontation where possible, and if provoked into a bite neither their fangs nor their venom do much damage. Their reputation rests on their tendency to invade people's houses, invariably causing mayhem when they scuttle out unexpectedly from behind a curtain. If you let them be, they're good house guests, cheerfully ridding your residence of flies, cockroaches and mosquitoes.
We could fill this entire list with sharks – much-maligned creatures mostly uninterested in humans – and Caribbean reef sharks have more reason to be aggrieved than most. As their name suggests, these sharks patrol the shallow reefs of the Caribbean, which makes them constant companions to divers and snorkellers sampling the region's world-famous undersea sights. Curious but tolerant, these sharks grow up to 10 feet (3m), and are so unfazed by people that guides in the Bahamas will feed them while tourists in scuba gear look on. The sharks ace the health and safety check – with zero fatalities and only four unprovoked bites since records began.
Did it fool you? Be honest – what, on first glance, did you think this photo depicted? Spicebush swallowtails are elegant butterflies with wings of black and bluish-green, but, like all butterflies, they must spend a month as caterpillars before reaching their final form. To deter predators during this vulnerable time, the caterpillars camouflage themselves as snakes, with vibrant green colouring and ferocious black-and-yellow eyespots. It looks pretty seethrough to us, but a passing bird catching a glimpse through the canopy is far more easily duped.
Type 'terrifying fish' into an image-generating AI, and the result would probably look something like this. There's no prizes for guessing where the fangtooth gets its name, as it boasts teeth that are larger proportional to its size than those of any other marine species. Indeed, the fish's fangs are so big that it has pouches in the roof of its mouth to stop them from piercing its brain. Found at depths of 1,600 feet (500m) or lower, the fangtooth lives in the darkest recesses of the ocean, where good looks carry little evolutionary value. Fortunately for us – and for other inhabitants of the deep – the fangtooth is only about six inches (15cm) long.
Do you remember going to school fetes and trying to guess the number of sweets in the jar? We'd like to play a similar game, called 'guess the number of legs on the millipede'. Millipede literally means 'thousand feet', but only one species lives up to that name – an Australian breed with 1,300 legs that lives deep underground. The giant African millipede contents itself with between 300 and 400, but is by far the largest species by weight. Unable to bite or sting, these clever critters are sometimes kept as exotic pets but are notorious for escaping their enclosures. There could be one loose in your building right now.
If you're terrified of rats, as many are – why? We get that you don't want them in the house: they chew through wires, infect your food with parasites and bacteria, and their urine carries leptospirosis. But what is it about their appearance that makes them so much more traumatising than, say, a fluffy little dormouse. Rodents are normally the kings of cute, and no one has ever screamed and jumped onto a chair at the sight of someone's pet hamster. Is it really just the hairless tails?
It's hard to see in this photo, but Japanese spider crabs are huge. Found mostly off Japan's Pacific coast, they can grow up to a staggering 12.5 feet (3.8m) claw-to-claw – that's the same as two king-size beds put end to end. Big crabs have big pincers, but these bottom-feeders are docile and harmless to humans. Indeed, its unwieldy frame makes the Japanese spider crab more fragile than fierce, and if you were by some strange coincidence to find yourself between its claws, it would probably hurt less than a nip from a crab at the beach.
We dare you to meet this bird's gaze for more than five seconds without looking away. Often called shoebill storks (though they aren't storks at all; their nearest living relatives are pelicans), these giant wading birds can grow up to five feet (1.5m) tall and boast perhaps the animal kingdom's frowniest faces. There's something primeval in the intensity of their stare, and the birds are often compared with dinosaurs. The shoebill's intimidating appearance has made it a popular subject for online memes, but in reality it's unusually tolerant of humans, generally allowing researchers to click their cameras at close range.
Urgh. It's just... urgh. A relative of the tailless whip scorpion, the vinegaroon is a small desert predator that borrows body parts from some of nature's worst animals. With eight legs, potent pincers, a suspiciously scorpion-esque tail and the ability to spray acetic acid from its abdomen, it boasts an impressive defensive arsenal. But it's an elusive and non-venomous ambush predator that eats beetles, crickets, caterpillars and occasionally other vinegaroons, and poses no threat to humans. It could mildly injure you in theory, but it doesn't want to; give your neighbourhood vinegaroon its personal space, and it will do the same for you.
Did you know that thousands of metres beneath the surface of the ocean there's an entire subgenre of sharks that almost never see the light of day? These deep-sea drifters include the incredibly long-lived Greenland shark (there are individuals alive today that predate the United States), and the rubber-lipped megamouth shark, a harmless filter-feeder with a gaping maw that measures up to 18 feet (5.5m) and weighs up to 1,215kg (2,680lbs). We're mildly appalled to say that the megamouth shark was the only deep-sea shark we could get good pictures of, and there were several much scarier candidates. Google 'frilled shark' and 'goblin shark'. Yikes.
Vultures join sharks, wolves and city pigeons among the world's most unfairly maligned animals. The birds feed on carrion, and have developed an unwarranted reputation as prophets of doom that stalk dying men. This, along with their jagged talons, piercing eyes and cruelly-curved beaks, has made them easy targets for fear and loathing. But vultures cannot predict the future, and, even if they could, would have no reason to shadow still-live prey while already-deceased meals go begging. In reality, vultures are nature's clean-up crew, eliminating the toxic bacteria carried by the corpses they consume. It's a dirty job – but someone's got to do it.
OK, so Goliath birdeaters aren't completely harmless. Their first line of defence is a rather impotent hissing noise, but they can – and if directly threatened, will – deliver a bite that hurts about as much as a wasp sting. It's not nothing, but it hardly justifies the blood-curdling screams that would surely accompany finding one of these under your pillow. The world's largest spider, the Goliath birdeater earns its name by occasionally eating birds – as well as mice, frogs and lizards – and by being very, very big. The size of a dinner plate and the weight of a small puppy, these South American monsters are pure nightmare fuel for arachnophobes, but they're even more afraid of you than you are of them.
The star-nosed mole is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Resident Evil video game series, in which the player takes on hordes of deformed creatures with tentacles spewing from their faces. It's far less likely to attack you – but it's probably even less visually appealing. Fortunately no one has to look at it very often, as it spends almost its entire life underground, scraping its way through the soil with its five-fingered claws and feeling out prey with its nerve-packed nose tendrils. In defence of the star-nosed mole, it's not so much scary – it's just a bit gross.
Anything that can contort its mouth into a gaping purple hexagon gets a no from us, and even the eastern hognose snake's most ardent defenders would concede that it's not exactly friendly. But, very much unlike the cobras it's occasionally mistaken for, this snake can barely injure, let alone kill. Its main defence mechanism is to roll over rather pathetically and play dead. When it does strike – which is very rare – it does so with its mouth closed, and its venom is harmless to humans anyway. The snakes are so inoffensive that they're often kept as pets, and you're most likely to encounter one in a glass case at the house of a slightly strange friend.
In hit TV show River Monsters, angler and presenter Jeremy Wade describes the alligator gar as "a living fossil that's been unchanged for more than 60 million years". Exact estimates vary, but certainly this fish has been lurking in the lower Mississippi for a very, very long time, ambushing catfish, birds, turtles, small mammals and crabs. Urban legends blaming this river monster for fish-on-human violence are happily wide of the mark, and its bloodthirsty reputation rests entirely on its fearsome appearance. These gars can grow up to 10 feet (3m) long and weigh a whopping 150kg (350lbs), while their elongated snouts boast not one, but two rows of pointed teeth.
When early European settlers in Tasmania heard bone-chilling shrieks and growls emanating from the bush late at night, they attributed the noises to demonic servants of Satan. They weren't quite right, although Tasmanian devils do boast a bite powerful enough to crush bones to go with their unearthly calls. These carnivores bare their fangs when threatened, but their reputation for aggression is entirely misguided. They're timid animals that will always choose flight over fight, and pose no threat to humans.
Read on to discover the cute and cuddly animals that are actually very dangerous