Alces Alces, Finland's most dangerous animal

As the public recoils in fear from wolves and bears, Helsingin Sanomat examined which animals actually kill or injure people

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By Mikko-Pekka Heikkinen
     
      Animals are nice, but sometimes they turn against us humans.
      Thousands of Finns die, are injured, or fall ill each year as a result of contact with domestic or wild animals. More often than not the fatalities are caused by mammals, though the largest single spreader of disease is a small eight-legged creature belonging to the spider family, the tick Ixodes ricinus.
      The No.1 killer is Alces alces, the largest member of the deer family and the largest mammal found in Finland. This is the beast known to North Americans as the moose and to Europeans as the elk.
      The elk is no predator with a taste for human flesh, preferring instead to nibble on saplings, shrubs, and the young shoots and leaves of trees. All the same, it is an effective killing machine in its own clumsy way.
     
There are approximately 100,000 elk in Finland, spread all over the country. In 2005, there were something like 2,000 collisions between elk and motor vehicles, leading to the deaths of 12 people and causing injuries to a further 193. This was an unusually "fatal" year - on average six people die in car-elk accidents, and just over 200 are injured.
      Collisions with elk and the various types of deer found in Finland are also a very expensive matter.
      The insurance companies paid out something in the region of EUR 14 million in 2005 for damage to vehicles caused by their coming into contact with such creatures. The sums in compensation paid for death and personal injury were of the same order.
      The costs to society as a whole were even greater, at EUR 87 million. The figures are taken from the statistical databases of the Finnish Motor Insurers' Centre and the Finnish Road Administration, FINNRA.
      If 2005 was a bad twelve months, last year saw appreciably fewer recorded car-elk collisions than on average. By the end of October 2006, there had been just three fatalities.
     
Animals as a whole pose a fairly serious threat to life and limb on Finnish roads. A total of 550 people were injured in 400 car vs. animal accidents in 2005.
      Aside from the considerable mass of an elk, cars are involved in overly close encounters with reindeer, horses, and dogs. In these accidents, fatalities among the humans are extremely rare.
     
In statistical terms at least, a farm is a dangerous place, since it houses a lot of large and powerful animals.
      In the period between 1998 and 2005, cows have killed three people, horses another three, a bull took one life, and a ram another, according to Statistics Finland.
      Non-fatal incidents involving cows are actually quite common. According to the Farmers' Social Insurance Institution (MELA), in 2002 there were more than 1,000 accidents involving moving an animal for transport or during milking.
     
Sometimes the four-legged killer actually resides in the victim's living room. At least ten people have died from being bitten or knocked down by a dog in the years since 1998. In the case of bites, it is usually an infection passed through the dog's saliva - the capnocytophaga canimorsis bacteria - that brings on a septicaemic reaction.
      The breeding of a dog to become a suitable pet can also bring out the dark side in a pooch.
      "Dogs have any number of character disorders that can make them unpredictable", charges Seppo Turunen, the director of the Helsinki Korkeasaari Zoo.
      The insurers Tapiola paid out last year on 213 claims for personal injury caused by dogs, amounting to EUR 55,000 in compensation.
      Another insurance company, IF, reports that the most common cause for personal injury claims on home liability insurance policies is when a dog bites someone.
      Well over a hundred such claims come in each year. Usually the injuries are minor, but in some cases the victim has had to have a finger or toe amputated, reports Laura Rastas, a claims manager with IF.
     
In cold statistical terms, the humble wasp can be quite as dangerous as a dog. Nine people died as a result of allergic reactions after being bitten by wasps, hornets, or bees between 1998 and 2006.
      Snakes, on the other hand, have a relatively bad reputation relative to the actual harm they cause.
      The last time anyone died as a result of a bite from an adder (Vipera berus, the only poisonous snake found in the wild in Finland) was in 1998.
     
For the real mass nuisance of the animal kingdom, we almost need to take out a magnifying glass. The tick Ixodes ricinus is only from 1-11 mm in length, and yet it packs a decent punch in that it spreads Lyme disease or Lyme borreliosis.
      As many as four to five thousand Finns each year suffer symptoms as a result.
      "There have been appreciably more Lyme borreliosis cases recorded annually since the millennium than there were in the 1990s. In the worst years the numbers were up by as much as 50 per cent", says Dr Jarmo Oksi, from Turku University's Department of Medical Microbiology. There were eighteen recorded cases of the potentially fatal tick-borne meningoencephalitis in Finland last year.
      Ixodes ricinus is found particularly often in the archipelago region and along the south coast. The incidence is highest on the Åland Islands, where vaccination is available free of charge to persons born before 1999. Once manifest in the victim, the disease is usually incurable.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.1.2007

More on this subject:
 COMMENTARY: Fear in the forest

Links:
  Elk or Moose (Wikipedia)
  Tick (Wikipedia)
  Lyme disease (Wikipedia)

MIKKO-PEKKA HEIKKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mikko-pekka.heikkinen@hs.fi