While the female of the species may stereotypically be mothers, nurturers and protectors, you can think again.
As the famous Rudyard Kipling poem goes, "For the female of the species is more deadly than the male". Across the animal kingdom, there are plenty of females that attack, hunt and even fight to the death in order to ensure the survival of their offspring and themselves. Here, we take a look at 11 of the deadliest females found in nature.
Deadliest female animals
Spider
In a brutal behaviour known as sexual cannibalism, females in some spider species eat their mates before, during or after mating. This may occur to provide the female with nutrition for egg development, the female is exercising a preference for male behaviour, or the female is particularly aggressive. The most famous female spider to exhibit sexual cannibalism is, of course, the black widow spider.
However, there are various tactics used by males to avoid death, including catapulting away with spring-like legs, bringing the female a gift to distract her, and feigning death.
Mosquito
Described as the world’s deadliest animal, it’s thought that mosquitoes cause over 600,000 human deaths from malaria each year, and it’s all down to the female half of the population.
Some female mosquitoes require blood to produce or lay their eggs. And although the mosquito herself isn’t deadly, it is what she can potentially transfer into the human blood that can often be deadly – parasites, such as Plasmodium which causes malaria, or viruses, such as dengue or Zika.
Of the 3,600 species of mosquito, it is only species of the Anopheles genus that can carry malaria.
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Mantis
Sexual cannibalism is also known to occur in many of the mantis species, commonly called praying mantis due to the praying-like posture of their folded front legs. The larger female will bite the head off a smaller male, as she would do when eating her prey, during copulation. However, headless male mantids will continue mating. She will die shortly after laying her eggs.
Green anaconda
The green anaconda forms a mating ball of one female and multiple males. This mating ball can last up to four weeks, with the female mating with more than one male. The female green anaconda is the biggest and heaviest snake in the world, and is much larger than the males. During mating, she may eat some of the males – quite unusual for a vertebrate species.
She needs plenty of protein to make it through her gestation period: fasting for seven months, incubating the eggs within her body, and then giving birth to between 20-30 live young.
Anglerfish
In many species of anglerfish, the male is much smaller than the female, and their roles are drastically different. The male anglerfish’s primary purpose is to find a female – and fuse with her, becoming a parasitic appendage and relying on her for nutrients (technically making them some of the most devoted mates). In contrast to the male, the female is the one who hunts and uses her bioluminescent lure to attract prey.
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Meerkat
These darling little creatures and regular TV stars hide a dark secret – the females are incredibly vicious to each other. Author and BBC Wildlife columnist Lucy Cooke described the female meerkat as “the most murderous mammal”.
The matriarch of a meerkat clan does not allow most of the other females to breed, bullying them with her testosterone-induced size and aggression. And if they do manage to reproduce, she will kill and eat the pups. The pups’ mother is typically banished as well, which will result in death unless she can redeem herself by acting as a wet-nurse for the matriarch’s pups.
Lion
Although the male lion is referred to as ‘the king of the jungle’, it’s the females of a pride who do the majority of the hunting. The lionesses work together in co-ordinated groups to take down their prey, using their speed, stamina, and teamwork to overpower animals like wildebeest and zebra.
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Sparrowhawk
As with a number of other bird of prey species, the female sparrowhawk is much larger size than the male – known as reversed size dimorphism. She is both bigger and stronger, and this size advantage allows her to take on larger prey.
However, she must rely on him after they’ve mated, as she will not hunt until the chicks are old enough to be left alone.
Bonobo
Bonobos are renowned for having a more relaxed society than their close relative the chimpanzees, including sharing food with other groups and – famously – using sexual behaviours to greet each other and diffuse conflict. However, in this matriarchal society, the females will gang up and attack males that are being threatening, resulting in serious injuries.
Nonetheless, a 2024 study found that male bonobos were far more aggressive than male chimpanzees – but these aggressive behaviours didn’t result in deaths, which does occur with chimpanzees.
King cobra
Although it is a large and venomous snake, and deemed one of the deadliest snakes in the world, the king cobra prefers to flee from humans rather than to attack. If it feels cornered, then it may try to attack. However, a female incubating her eggs does not want to leave them vulnerable to predators, and there is a higher likelihood of her attacking. If a king cobra does attack, its venom contains enough neurotoxins to kill 20 humans.
Bees and wasps
While it is well-known that bee and wasp stings can be extremely painful – it's best to avoid being stung by the 'murder hornet' – it is sometimes overlooked that the male bees and wasps aren’t involved at all. Male bees and wasps cannot sting. This is because the stinger of a bee or wasp is actually a modified ovipositor: an organ used for laying eggs. And so, the female bees and wasps are far more deadly than the males could ever be!
More of nature's deadliest species
