Down in jungleland: Little And Lethal

On land, how many of us are likely to even see, let alone be eaten, by lions, tigers or leopards, or hugged by bears or trampled and gored by an elephant, buffalo and rhino? Sure, these things do happen. Those who swagger into the jungles to exterminate the offending animals, and later pose with bandoliers and high-powered rifles over the animals they have so executed are feted as heroes. But right from childhood, we are brainwashed into believing that all of these creatures have only one thing on their mind: to tear us apart and devour us. “Eat up your vegetables or the big bad wolf will be at the door!” “Behave, otherwise, the tiger will eat you!” Even here, there’s hierarchy: the carnivores have a worse reputation than the vegetarians. Have you ever heard your mom or teacher say, ‘Do your homework or I’ll call the elephant’? Quite frankly, if it’s big creatures we need to fear (and go out to hunt down), it ought to be people driving motor vehicles, which kill and maim far more of us, than all the large mammals and reptiles put together.

But, really, the little creatures are the ones to be feared: the little Davids. In the seas, swarms of virtually invisible jellyfish can shut down entire beaches. Step on a stonefish and you’ll never forget the experience if you survive. A sea snake may seem like a multicoloured wriggling streamer, but it can kill every time.

On terra-firma, it gets even worse because some of these creatures don’t even have to touch us in order to take us down. When the conditions are right, armies of “hoppers” come out of the ground and demolish vast swathes of cropland and then, when the damage is done, turn into devastating airforces of locusts, tens of miles long: they can clean half a country out. Mosquitoes account for millions every year, flies can give you a choice of over 100 extremely unpleasant diseases and swarms of angry bees and hornets will pursue you till the ends of the earth if they feel you’ve insulted their queens. Snakes use a variety of venom that can dissolve or disintegrate your blood, brains, muscles and maybe all of these. Get in the path of a marching column of army ants and you’re not likely to get out, no matter what caliber of firepower you may open up on them. These guys may be little but they come in billions, and that makes them very big indeed. They say all the ants on earth weigh as much as all of us and that spiders outweigh us several times over.

Also, these deadly little fellows can make us suffer much more and for far longer than their size would suggest; the amount of pain they can inflict is way out of proportion to their weight. I guess the final nail in our coffin is put in by those tiny “critters” which we can only see under the microscope and which give us more pain and suffering than any blood-thirsty carnivore has ever done: the tiny germs, bacteria and viruses that float around invisibly, looking for victims, and engaging us in an arms race, which they’re still winning. Frankly, if we fancy big game hunting, these are the guys we ought to go after, not elephants, lions or buffaloes.

There is one major caveat: ordinarily, most of these guys, especially the Goliaths — the sharks, tigers, lions, bears, buffaloes, rhinos or elephants — are not in the least interested in coming after us. But if we bother them, step on their toes, threaten their babies, or invade their territories — they will defend themselves. As for the little guys, like the flies, mosquitoes and various delightful viruses and bacteria, we first create salubrious surroundings for them, and then get upset when they move in. Garbage landfills and fetid water-bodies brimming with sewage are honeymoon suites for myriads of flies and mosquitoes and there’s no shortage of them anywhere!

So, on your next trek in the jungle, by all means, hold your breath and beware of elephants (which can move as silently as smoke) and tigers, et al. But do look carefully where you put your feet and hands too, so that you don’t disturb some tiny-tot multi-legged creature that, with a pinprick, can cause you more grief than all the great whites in the world.