Bill Gates posted the graphic below to his blog on April 25.

It shows how many people are killed by different species of animal every year. The big red block at the bottom might surprise you:


"The number of mosquito-caused deaths really is a mind-blowing thing. Other than humans killing humans during periods of war, most years, the mosquito wins," the Mosquito Week trailer says.

The reason?

Mosquitoes carry terrible diseases, including malaria (which kills more than 600,000 people every year); dengue fever virus; Rift Valley fever virus; yellow fever; chikungunya virus; West Nile virus; Lymphatic filariasis; and Japanese encephalitis.

These mosquito-borne infections don't just kill — they debilitate millions of people. Sometimes these people can't work and can't support themselves. Billions of dollars in productivity is lost in places where these debilitating infections run rampant and are fueled by mosquitoes.

The deadliest of all is malaria, a parasitic infection that mosquitoes inject directly into our bloodstream when they bite. The parasites then travel to the victim's liver, where they multiply and reproduce. Their babies travel the bloodstream, destroying red blood cells.

malaria mosquito parasite.gifYouTube / thegatesnotes

Usually the infection doesn't kill, but it's so abundant in so much of the equatorial world that more than 200 million people are infected every year, and more than 700,000 die from the disease.

Here are the areas of the world where Malaria is the worst, according to the CDC:malaria map cdcCDC

The site is doing a series of posts for "Mosquito Week," including a post about "What It Feels Like To Have Malaria."