8 of the World’s Deadliest Animals are Found in Arizona

My niece is scared of Arizona. When she visited from the Midwest a few years ago, we had long, fraught conversations about the ways she believed everything in Arizona was on a mission to hurt, maim, or kill her.

I'll admit, she's a bit dramatic. She worried about tarantulas, scorpions, cactus, and all manner of flora and fauna she imagined were on the singular mission to "unalive" her.

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I did my best to set her mind at ease, explaining that most of the things she fretted about were more scared of her than she was of them. Well, today I learned (TIL!) about the Crespo Scale, and I now believe her list of scary Arizona creatures that might or might not be trying to hurt you was woefully incomplete.

Arizona, Here's the Crespo Scale of Deadly Creatures in Our State

An undergrad at Exeter University named David Duarte Crespo created the Crespo scale to rank animal species based on how dangerous a threat level it posed to a random person in a given country. 

The Crespo scale ranks animals based on their population size (PS) and mortality rate (MR), and it focuses on how likely a species is to cause human fatalities. 

The fascinating study ranked animals across the globe. Many of the locations where any given animal is considered to be highly deadly are in places with insufficient medical care and where dangerous species of the given animal is prevalent.

Of the top twenty animals Crespo listed on his scale, at least eight of the creatures are found in the state of Arizona.

Arizona's Deadliest Animals

To be fair, some of our Arizona varieties are far less virulent than in other countries, but at least one of the animals is as deadly as the type you'd find anywhere.

Click here to see the full list. Here are the top eight most dangerous animals on the Crespo scale that are found in Arizona.

Sources: IFL Science | Twisted Sifter | Technology Networks Applied Sciences | Research Gate | Phoenix Coldcase Database