Bugs, Ranked

Puja Patel|published: Tue 7th June, 16:39 2016

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No matter what this list reveals, please know that mosquitos are the worst bug. Nothing fills me with a stronger desire to kill than seeing an entitled-ass mosquito flying around, likely high off of the blood and pain of an innocent passerby. They’re tiny and quiet and often hard to notice until after they’ve already bitten you, their victim, who might have just been trying to enjoy the nice weather, for once. There are about 3,500 species of the dang things, of which hundreds can transmit diseases like freaking Zika (!) and the West Nile virus (!) and yellow fever (!) and malaria, a disease that killed close to half a million people last year. There’s no great environmental reason why we shouldn’t wipe the disease-carrying versions off of the face of the earth, really— some biologists claim that ecosystems would adapt— but it requires genetic editing and, well, that’s a whole other can of worms.While we’re here: Worms are considered to be “bugs” by most of Deadspin’s staff, but not by Drew and Scocca. Ley likes roly polys, McKenna is fond of centipedes and “loves” cicadas, and we all seem to agree that spiders are “fine” because they keep other bugs in check. After spending about an hour simply naming bugs and arguing about which ones were “the worst,” we decided to rank them. There was a spreadsheet involved. The staff scored each bug from 1-10 with 10 being “the worst,” and used the average scores to come up with a very scientific final ranking of bugs—just bugs that we wanted to talk about, no further explanation—which you will find below. Definitely google the ones that you haven’t heard of. (That’ll be the “tree lobster,” if you’re wondering.) I’m so sorry.

Ladybugs (1.07)

Fireflies (1.15)

Roly Poly bugs (1.20)

Butterflies (1.62)

Bees (1.68)

Caterpillars (1.83)

Worms (1.90)

Praying Mantis (1.92)

Dragonflies (2.15)

Spiders (2.54)

Crickets (2.91)

Cicadas (2.92)