Here's The Animal Most Likely To Kill You In Texas

HOUSTON, TX — A state as big as Texas is surely to have some unique creature or wild animal that can rip someone to shreds, give them a venomous bite, chew them up in the Gulf of Mexico or even cause vehicular accidents. Ranker.com published an article that cites the animal in each state that's most likely to kill a human.

In Oklahoma it's a tiger because, well, they somehow have a problem with large animals on the loose, especially tigers. In Arkansas it's the black bear and in New Mexico it's deer — because of all the car crashes they cause. In Louisiana it's hornets, wasps and bees. Although having grown up there, I can vouch that the mosquito should be the state bird.

In Texas? Well, it's not deer, dogs, bear, coyotes, armadillos, sharks, spiders, mosquitos, mountain lions or snakes of any kind. Ready for it? It's flood-rafting fire ants.

I had to look that up myself. Here's what the site said about this new phenomna:

"During Hurricane Harvey, videos showing ant colonies floating on the flood waters caused a bit of a panic, and for good reason. When a fire ant colony finds something dry, they will climb it, even if it's a terrified person. They developed this technique in their native Amazon rainforest, and stick together using their hooked legs and the wax on their bodies."

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) stated that Texas is one of the states in the South that is experiencing increasing problems with invasive fire ants, whose bite is painful but rarely fatal. They are the most dangerous to individuals who have an allergy to their venom, much like people who are allergic to bees.

Deer, dogs, bears and insects seem to dominate the list of most dangerous animals that can kill someone around the country. But there were some strange ones and some not so strange. For example, in South Dakota it was large mammals and North Dakota it was bison. In Montana it was grizzlies and Hawaii it's tiger sharks. In Maine it's a moose and in three states — Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska — it's cattle. Some domestic and others "rogue."

In Nevada it's deer mice, Illinois is zombie coyotes, Georgia is venomous snakes and Florida is the mosquito, not the alligator.

Here's the list again if you want to see what animals to avoid on your summer travels.

Image: Ants clumped together float in flood waters following Hurricane Isaac on August 30, 2012 in LaPlace, Louisiana. Isaac, downgraded Wednesday to a tropical depression, is moving slowly inland, dumping huge amounts of rain and knocking out power to Louisianans in scattered parts of the state. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)