Chart: The animals that are most likely to kill you this summer
Rounded to the nearest whole number, sharks killed about 1 person per year between 2001 and 2013
Are you afraid of sharks? You should be, what with their insatiable appetite and 15 rows of serrated teeth and the way they lurk in that murky area just offshore where you can't see the bottom and you can't move quickly and, oh God, did something just brush up against my leg?
Whenever there's a shark attack in the news -- or two of them, for that matter -- somebody inevitably tries to console us with big numbers. "Well, heart disease kills 611,000 people a year," they tell us. "Stop fretting about sharks and maybe worry about your Dorito habit instead."
Fair enough. But this is the wrong comparison to make. If we want to properly contextualize shark attacks, we need to compare sharks to their peers -- bears and gators and the myriad other fanged barbed and venomous creatures that could sting us or bite us or otherwise ruin our day.
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