Oh. My. GOD!
Giraffe, that was hilarious. That was the best laugh I’ve had in days. Thanks. 
I was going to say Komodo Dragon or Polar Bear but if we are being realistic about what we might actually run into then I may have to go with wasp after being terroized by one by my front door when I came home today.
But they’re such amazing animals! One of the highlights of my adult life was getting to “meet” a basking wild alligator up close. Up very close. As in, my request to a local to take me somewhere to see a wild alligator wound up with me walking up about a foot away from a six footer before I saw it. In a lake with two signs:
“No swimming”
“Do not feed the alligators”
Methinks one of those signs was redundant.
My nominees for scary critters:
Portuguese man o’war
And an honorable mention to the very ill-tempered Cape Buffalo
The most horrifying of all animals are those unidentified little singing (?) mutants in the Quiznos commercials.
Inigo Montoya, everybody’s a proofreader. 
I could have sworn that I typed “kimono dragon” into Google, and it asked, “Do you mean komono dragon?” I figured that was it. Of course it wasn’t, because it’s komodo. :smack: If anything, the potential to get the name confused makes it even more scary.
After I started the thread I thought of the camel spider was surprised to see that no one listed it. I know that it has been discussed to death, but they seem to have earned quite a reputation, whether they deserve it or not.
What about if an animal isn’t in its own environment? Like one gets away from a zoo or something and you see it walking down the street towards you? That eliminates anything in the water, and alligators or crocodiles (they can’t move that fast, can they?). Bugs are pretty scary, because they have the stealth thing going for them, so I don’t know if they should count.
Can’t everyone? 
The only time I ever saw The Crocodile Hunter really freaked out was when he got chased by a Komodo Dragon so that has to be up there.
I’d have to go with the King Cobra though. I don’t know whether or not they regularly attack humans but they inject piles of venom to make up for the fact that their venom isn’t the most toxic (if I recall correctly) and look very scary when they get their hood up and are ready to pounce. There is nothing I would want to encounter less. It probably doesn’t help that I am absolutely petrified of snakes.
If men could do that, we wouldn’t need to vocalize either.
You want to take the word of a bloke who always swims in his clothes? Shit if he can’t sort out appropriate swimming gear…
Komodo dragons are a pretty good tourist attraction now. I have an idiot brother who was on a “watch the goat” get eaten tour. He loved it.
My vote goes to hippoes or polar bears.
Did anyone else read that as hippies or polar bears at first?
Flower power is a scary thing
I did. I had this image of some poor bastard holding the last bag of Funions at a Dead show … The last thing you see will be a wall of tie-dye bearing down on you. shudder
Yes! Right up until you queried it, at which point I re-read carefully.
Personally, I’d go with polar bears. They’re nasty nasty guys and will track you for miles.
(but they’re sooooo cute!)
Deer.
That’s right. Gentle, vegetarian, leave-me-alone-and-I’ll-leave-you-alone deer.
Because I am 100 percent, utterly convinced that I will wrap my car around a deer some day, and that I’m not likely to survive the experience.
Although i’m likely to come across neither in the next week or so, I wouldn’t particularly want to be caught swimming at night with either Humboldt Squid or around Hippoes. Or for that matter I wouldn’t have thought swimming anywhere near a Giant Squid would be much fun if it decided you were going to be its 11o’clock snack. Being dragged to your death while simultaneously drowning and being eaten by a big fuck off beak? No thanks.
Land animals don’t particularly bother me that much. The Bee that was the size of my fist buzzing around on Sunday afternoon wasn’t in my best interest to be around though.
The spider…any spider. Something about them just freaks me out!! And they know it!! Any spider in a hundred yard radius will find its way to me. I think its a spider-world joke…
Gotta agree with the spider thing, any. Cept maybe the really little ones cause you’d just feel stupid shying from them.
I submit to you CANDIRU
This is the parasite that swims up your arse, or even up your stream of piss :eek:
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned rats. They can be found almost everywhere. Many species are excellent climbers. They can eventually chew their way through almost any barrier. They are aggressive and become even moreso if cornered.
You know, I was doing okay with the hippos and the polar bears, and even the spiders. But now I’m going to be thinking about rats while I’m trying to sleep and I blame the resultant freak-out on you. 
Sharks scare the crap out of me. But there’s an easy way to avoid sharks–dont’ go swimming. I can deal with my fear of sharks. Snakes don’t bother me (much), nor do bears, coyotes, alligators, etc.
Wild turkeys. You laugh, but I kid you not. There’s a bunch of wild turkeys that live in the woods above my house, and occasionally they take a field trip to the parking lot. Nothing starts your morning off like being chased to your car by three wild turkeys in full gobble mode. My memory may have exaggerated the event, but I’m fairly certain one of them said “Get the cranberry sauce” as they closed in.