Safari! Animal #15 - I may be small, but beware my bite: the mosquito.
Mbu in Swahili means mosquito.
What are the deadliest African animals? Lions, hyenas, leopards, crocodiles? If you are a savanna herbivore, perhaps; but if you are a human, there's one that far outweighs the rest - the Anopheles mosquito. That's because the Anopheles can carry a parasite known as plasmodium falciparum. When the falciparum-bearing mosquito sucks the blood of a human, the protozoa enter the person's bloodstream where they can cause the deadly disease malaria. Malaria can be treated and cured with drugs, but unfortunately it often isn't. Thousands and thousands of people die every year from malaria - transmitted by the tiny Anopheles mosquito.