Although it is generally accepted that all creations on Earth are perfect and beautiful, the human mind is so arranged that what does not fit into the canons of beauty or has no logical explanation is ugliness or anomaly.
So people began to determine what the most terrible creature in the world was, creating lists of what they saw as beautiful and terrible. In fact, each deviation from the norm of beauty in the animal world has its own explanation, and most often it comes down to the instinct of self-preservation. But even the Creator could not create creatures more terrible than human fears and ignorance did.
The creation of monsters by the human mind
At all times, myths about gods and heroes aroused less interest than stories about creatures that harmed people. Today, one can distinguish among the legends of different peoples those that are included in the category of “the most terrible mythical creatures in the world”. Here are just a few of them:
- The basilisk is found in the legends of many countries and with small deviations has a number of similarities: the body of a dragon with huge wings and a look that turns all life into stones, with which it feeds. His head may have a cockerel, in other versions - a snake. It hunts at night and, according to legend, if it sees itself in a mirror, it will be petrified.
- The Japanese have a legend about a whole race of evil creatures called sikome. They live in the mountains, very warlike, taller and stronger than people, with burning eyes and huge fangs, very bloodthirsty. Getting away from their attack is very difficult.
- Ba'awan shi came to our time from Scottish legends. According to the description, these are bloodthirsty and evil fairies that take the form of golden-haired women in a long green dress. The victims of the demon are gullible men who have not noticed reindeer hooves under the hem of the dress.
Similar examples can be found in the legends of different countries - from ancient Sumer to medieval Europe. Each of them is the most terrible creature in the world for an individual people, which hates people and has a personal “set” of teeth, claws and hooves, with which they eat their victims, suck their blood or take their souls.
The most terrible creatures of the African continent
The prejudices and fears of ancient people about deadly animals have created their own list of the 10 most terrible creatures in the world. Many of them live in Africa and still cause superstitious horror. Among them:
- The cannibal crocodile Gustav, living in Burundi. For 60 years now, he has been inspiring fear in people, because Gustav does not kill them for food, but because he likes the process of fighting a person. He was shot at several times, but he is still alive and, as before, inspires terror among people.
- Aardvark is a creature that has a pig’s body, hare’s ears and a kangaroo’s tail; it is very ugly, although safe.
On this list, a spotted hyena, a hippopotamus and the most mass killer of people - a malaria mosquito, from the bite of which more than a million people die every year in the world. No less terrible is the tsetse fly, which causes people with sleeping sickness, from which there is no vaccine yet. Up to 300,000 people die from it annually.
Scary representatives of the deep sea
To find the scariest creature in the world, you can begin your search from the depths of the sea. Hidden in the dark from human eyes, their inhabitants have incredible shapes and amazing ability to survive. These include:
- Puffer fish, the look of which can for a long time cause nightmares. Huge teeth and eyes glowing in the dark against a dark body look frightening. She lures her victims with a luminescent process located under the lower jaw, which the other inhabitants of the depths take for a luminous worm, so they fearlessly try to feast on them and become lunch themselves.
- The black-headed shark is an extremely rare fish living at a depth of one and a half kilometers in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. She has a serpentine body up to 2 m long in dark brown. Large and mobile jaws with rows of sharp teeth can hold and swallow large prey.
- At a depth of one and a half to three kilometers in the dark strata of the oceans live deep-sea anglers - fish with huge teeth. Females (they are predators) of some species can be only 5 cm in length, and others - up to 1 m. Luminous processes on the head gave them this name.
No less terrible in appearance are a sea dragon and a monkfish, a pelican fish and a giant squid, a blue-ringed octopus and a shark-brownie - the inhabitants of the depths, which are among the top 10 most terrible creatures in the world of oceans.
Mysterious and mythical inhabitants of the forests
As soon as a person ends up in an unfamiliar night forest, any rustle or crack of a branch awakens his imagination. It inhabits the darkness with monsters that his distant ancestors feared. Among them there are both real animals and fantastic creatures:
- Yeti is an anomaly, perhaps some kind of dead end branch of the development of mankind, which was repeatedly observed, photographed and filmed, but did not find its habitat.
- A werewolf, or werewolf, is a legendary creature that turns into a man or a wolf. There are many written documents about this phenomenon since the Middle Ages, and nowadays films are made about them and horror novels are written.
Vindigo and chupacabra are also the product of the human mind, but people are still looking for evidence of their existence.
Mysterious creatures of exotic countries
These countries have such a name, not only because the constant warmth and gentle ocean for the inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere are exotic, but also because the animals and insects that live there have an unusual and often just frightening appearance. Modern legends of huge spiders, deadly snakes and the terrible inhabitants of coral reefs are based on.
- Paku fish, living in the waters near Papua New Guinea, has square teeth, very similar to human teeth. If we consider that it reaches a size of more than a meter, and its jaws are capable of chopping nuts, then it causes superstitious fear (not without reason) in people. Maybe this is not the scariest creature in the world, but it is definitely frightening and unusual.
- The Australian prickly dragon, although small in size, but its spikes give it a terrifying look, and the fact that it does not know how to drink adds to it a strange piquancy. It is enough for the prickly dragon to get on the wet sand, as all the moisture from it is transmitted through special tubules in the skin directly into the mouth of the lizard.
No less alien looks Madagascar ai-ai, looking like a cross between a bald monkey and a rat.
The scariest snakes
Among the 5 most terrible creatures in the world are snakes, which most people on the planet are unknowingly afraid of. Among them:
- Anaconda has always scared people with its huge size, reaching 5 meters. A powerful body, an imperceptible approach to prey and the incredible compressive power of the victim’s body still make this snake one of the most terrible in the world, otherwise they wouldn’t make horror films about it in Hollywood.
- The mountainous South African viper has processes on its head that resemble horns. This makes her look like a devilish tempter snake. It is good that the population of this poisonous snake is extremely small, so meeting with it is a rarity.
- Nosy enhydrin lives in the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf and off the coast of Australia. It is dangerous for divers, since its bite contains up to 9 mg of poison, while 1.5 mg is fatal to humans.
The Gabon viper and krayt, other snakes, even if they are beautiful, are always mentioned in the lists of the most terrible creatures of the planet, so great is the fear of people among them.
Scary creatures with wings
From the ancient myths of all the peoples of the world legends have come down to the terrible fire-breathing dragons, which incinerated people with their breath or demanded a tribute in the person of young virgins. Some huge creatures with wings were described in ancient manuscripts, sometimes they are observed in our time, to which there is evidence of hundreds of people.
Of the flying creatures living in our time, the most terrible are recognized:
- vulture guinea fowl;
- African Marabou;
- indian marabu.
These birds not only look unpleasant, but also have a very bad temper.
The most terrible and mysterious creatures of the planet
In the top 5 of the most terrible creatures in the world, you can include several mysterious creatures that scientists have not yet been able to identify. It:
- Loch Ness monster, photographs of which circled the whole world at one time. It is likely that representatives of these prehistoric animals, similar to plesiosaurs, were able to survive all this time in the depths of the lakes, as they were seen not only in Scotland, but also in New York, Norway and Sweden.
- The human moth was discovered in 1966 and was a creature 2 m tall with wings up to 3 m in scope. He was seen by many people, there are fuzzy photos of this creature. What it is and where it came from is not known.
How true the facts about these terrible anomalies are is unknown, but when so many people talk about what they saw, and their testimony coincides, it means that their words are true. To study it is the business of scientists.
Our days
It is difficult to choose a photo of the most terrible creature in the world, since each person has his own set of phobias and fears. For some, it will be a giant crocodile, but someone will be scared by a bald rat. Nevertheless, on the planet there are many creatures that scare with their appearance. Many people have yet to find and study.
The more a person learns about terrible and unprecedented creatures, the less he is afraid of them.