Updated December 20, 2017: 1 new entry and several misses added. Updated October 1, 2018: 15 new entries and many misses added. "List of Mountain Lion Attacks on People in California.The Unseen – A Guide to Recent Lesser-Known Horror Films "Desert Safety - Animals." (July 24, 2012) "First Case of Bubonic Plague in 2011 Appears in New Mexico." Time - Healthland. "The most dangerous venomous animals of the Southwest." The Tucson Citizen. "Introduced Species Summary Project: Africanized Honey Bee." (July 24, 2012) While their reputation as "killer bees" is more than a little exaggerated - any bee sting can kill a person who has an allergy to bee stings - it's still probably wise to avoid any bee hives in the vicinity of your camping grounds, even if the inhabitants look like normal, non-aggressive honeybees. Since then they've spread even further and, while not quite the threat that movies and novels sometimes make them out to be, nonetheless kill one or two people a year. When they get on your trail, it's difficult to get them off.īy the early 1990s, the Africanized bees had reached the United States, at first spreading into the desert regions of the Southwest. Africanized bees are like tiny, heat-seeking missiles. Africanized bees can detect intruders on their territory, such as humans, at longer distances than other bees and will chase those intruders for longer distances too. This produced an extremely aggressive strain of "Africanized" bees that, while having a sting that's no more poisonous than that of your average honeybee, is far more likely to defend its hives by attacking in large swarms. The crossbreeding worked and the hybrid bees tend to produce more honey than European honeybees, but some of the hybrid bees got loose and mated with the local bee population. They were the result of a crossbreeding experiment between European and African bees performed in the 1950s in Brazil in an attempt to come up with a hybrid bee that could survive the tropical climate. Killer bees, also known as Africanized honey bees, really shouldn't exist in the Americas at all. And then you should immediately look for a new campground. It will probably decide to go look for less annoying prey and leave you alone. Some experts say that the best thing to do if you meet a mountain lion who appears interested in you is to look threatening, even aggressive, as though you'd be willing to put up a fight. Mountain lions go for the neck and a bite from their sharp teeth can be fatal. And when one happens, the attack can be vicious. So mountain lion attacks, though rare, are still a threat to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, every couple of years some unlucky person meets a cougar who doesn't seem to understand the "humans-aren't-prey" rule, maybe because the human is injured and looks like easy pickings. Mountain lions are predators, but fortunately humans aren't their normal prey. You don't find them in as many places as you might have at one time, however, because civilization and hunters have driven them away from places with large populations, but they're still common in the American southwest. They live from northern Canada all the way south to Argentina. But the fleas can still spread the illness, so if you develop a high fever and swollen glands a few days after camping in prairie dog territory, you might want to get checked out by a doctor - fast!Ĭougars, also known as pumas, mountain lions and by a few other names as well, are found over most of north, south and Central America. (Rock squirrels, chipmunks and wild rabbits can also carry the disease.) The good news - for humans, if not for prairie dogs - is that the disease kills the prairie dogs themselves so quickly that you're not likely to find an infected one while still alive. So if you camp near a prairie dog town, don't get within flea-jumping distance of the residents. each year and it's not a disease to be taken lightly. Your chances of infection from a prairie dog are small, but 10 to 20 cases of bubonic plague are reported in the U.S. More specifically, it's carried by their fleas, which can not only infect other prairie dogs but nearby people. It's still around and is commonly carried by small rodents like prairie dogs in the southwest. Prairie dogs aren't especially dangerous to human beings except in one way: They can carry bubonic plague.īubonic plague? Didn't that disappear in the middle ages? Not quite. They're very social animals, at least among other prairie dogs, and live in clusters of underground burrows known as prairie dog towns.
Prairie dogs are cute, squirrel-like rodents found throughout most of the American Southwest. Ronald Wittek/Photographer's Choice/ Getty Images
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