Your Odds Of Getting Killed By A Shark?

PHILADELPHIA - With the hysteria over Shark Week underway, MyFoxPhilly looks at the odds of you getting killed by a shark compared with other animals.

Slideshow: 10 Popular Sharks

When it comes to shark fatalities among humans, Jaws is far down on the list of animals that kill humans in an incident.

In fact, the odds are probably greater that a stuffed shark would fall off a restaurant wall and whack you in the head.

Estimates range from 3 million to 1, to 10 million to 1, of being killed by a shark in your lifetime.

Most fatal shark attacks in the U.S. happen in Hawaii, Florida and California. So the odds of a fatal attack at the Jersey Shore are truly tiny.

The biggest animal killers are those close to home.

MyFoxPhilly looked at about 10 difference resources to see which members of the Animal Kingdom are most likely to hurt people, accidentally or on purpose.

There are two animals that topped the list, but there isn't an agreement on which one is related to the most human deaths.

The unofficial leader: deer. Fatalities from deer are almost related to motor-vehicle accidents. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates deer kill around 130 Americans annually by causing accidents.

Horses are also tied into a lot of deaths related to humans. Fatal encounters with horses can happen on a farm, a workplace, at a race track or in recreational riding.

The low estimate for horse-related fatalities is 106 per year. One academic is the true number is twice as high because of how injuries are reported at emergency rooms.

Beyond deer and horses, stinging insects ranked in the third spot, with at least 53 deaths per year from bees, wasps and hornets.

Next on the list are cattle and dogs. Cow-related deaths are in the workplace and average about 24 deaths of humans per year.

There are about 90 million cattle in America.

Estimates of deaths related to dog attacks and dog bites range from 20 to 28 people per year. But there are 77 million dogs in the United States, says the Humane Society.

Snakes post the next-biggest risk after cattle and dogs. Snake-related deaths average about 18 per year, including snake-bite victims and car crashes caused by people avoiding snakes.

Rounding out the list are birds at 4.3 deaths per year, and alligators at 1.4 deaths per year.

Given that only sharks, mountain lions and alligators prey on humans in nature, they cause very few fatalities.

In the U.S., mountain lions cause 0.6 deaths per year and sharks 0.4 deaths. They rank with tigers, scorpions and centipedes as killers.

But in Australia, sharks rank fourth on the list of animals that kill humans.