Black bear courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Jellyfish photo: public domain. Hawk photo, Paul Danese, CC BY-SA 4.0.


Nature, red in tooth and claw — sometimes with your blood. Modern living offers few opportunities to get up-close and personal with the incredible variety of life out there with a solid ability to really mess you up, but people find a way to make it happen regardless. So! Out of these options, organized by category, which is the strangest that’s found a way to injure you? (We’re keeping it local, and also excluding microscopic lifeforms because there are, like, 10 trillion of the things. No time to include all of ‘em.)