Insects. Bugs. Creepy-crawlies. They can be as amazingly beautiful as they are capable of being down-right stomach turning. Take a moment and test your fortitude and see if you can make it through all these super creepy-crawlies!
These Creepy Bugs Will Make Your Skin Crawl For Days!
#1 Africanised Honey Bee
They look like a normal sweet little honey bee you would find in your back garden but they are NOT. If you so much as casually walk past their hive they will chase you, swarming all around you, for half a mile. If you jump into water, they will wait for you to come up for air. If you swat at them, more will follow the scent of crushed bee. The only way to escape this terror is just to outrun them.
Why they are terrifying: The scariest thing about these bees is that we invented them. We can't blame mother nature for this one. Some horrible scientist wanted to create a honey bee that could survive in the jungle, so he crossed a honey bee, with an African bee, and created the devil in bee form, which can survive in the jungle. They are also spreading. They now cover all of South America, and are making their way up the United States. Thanks, humanity.

#2 Camel Spider
Found all over North Africa and the Middle East, these spiders grow up to 6 inches long. Although commonly known as a spider, they are not techinically a spider, but I doubt that's top of people's priority list when faced with one of these.
Why they are terrifying: Their jaws can be as big as a third of their body length, and although not deadly to humans, they pack a painful bite. They rose to fame when American soldiers in Afghanistan kept finding them seeking shade in their boots. What a nice surprise!

#3 Japanese Giant Hornet
All hornets are bad, but asian hornets may be the worst. With an average body length of 5 cm and a wing span of 7.5 cm, they are way too big. They're predatory and feed off other insects, often attacking honey bee hives to eat their young.
Why they are terrifying: Because their sting could kill you and their venom is powerful enough to disintegrate human flesh. One unlucky sting victim told National Geographic said, "it's like a hot nail through my leg."
#4 Bot flies.
These guys look like normal flies crossed with bumble bees, and are kinda cute. There are many different types including, the deer bot fly (pictured), the horse bot fly, and the human bot fly uh oh.
Why they are terrifying: They lay their eggs in flesh. Living flesh. A lot like the flesh you're covered in right now. And then the maggoty larva hatches and burrows out of your flesh. We have decided not to picture this because it is too scary, search only if you want nightmares forever. They are actually pretty harmless if you don't mind watching a maggot wiggle out of your skin.

#5 Goliath Spider
The biggest of all the spiders. They hunt by laying a "silk welcome mat" at the entrance to their burrows. They can sense when a careless mouse runs over it and then BAM, bye bye mouse.
Why they are terrifying: Because they are a foot across. That's bigger than your face. They also have fangs an inch long *shudder*. Despite this their bite apparently feels similar to a bee sting, and no reported human deaths by goliath spiders have ever been reported.

#6 Cicadas
Found all over North America, these creatures are well known for their crazy life cycles. They spend many years underground eating roots, before emerging all at once. The 17-year cicada for example, emerges in it's thousands, you guessed it, every 17 years.
Why they are terrifying: Because swarms. No one likes a swarm, unless it was a swarm of kittens, but no, this is a swarm of bugs. They are harmless, but if they were in their swarming frenzy and mistook you for a tree they could grip on to you with their spiky legs and try and lay eggs in you. They probably wouldn't, but if you look like a tree, watch out.

#7 Giant Orb Weaving Spider
As you can see, the giant orb weaver likes to eat birds. Quite large birds. Found in Australia, they grow to around the size of a human hand, though in more tropical climates they can be bigger.
Why they are terrifying: They're big, venomous, they eat birds, and they look like that. That's a lot of nope.

#8 Bullet Ant
These guys (Paraponera clavata) are found in rain forests throughout Central America and some of South America. They don't look like a bullet, so why are they nicknamed bullet ants?
Why they are terrifying: Because their sting is so painful that you feel like you've been shot, of course. In fact, they have another nickname, "Hormiga veinticuatro," or the 24 hour ant because the agonizing pain lasts that long. The sensation has been described as "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel." Yowch.
Furthermore, these things are apparently used by an indigenous tribe in Brazil in initiation ceremonies. They fill a glove with these ants and a boy puts his hand into it for at least 10 minutes while they sting the heck out of it. The boys get stung so bad that their hands are sometimes temporarily paralyzed. This is carried out around 20 times over a year before the boy is initiated into adulthood. Rather them than me.

#9 Amazonian Giant Centipede
These centipedes can grown up to a foot long, and are found all over the tropical regions of Central and South America.
Why they are terrifying: They deliver potent venom through their front pincers, which although it can't kill humans, is pretty damn painful. They can eat pretty much any smallish animal, including birds, rodents, bats, lizards and spiders. This is all very scary, but not quite as terrifying as imagining the feeling of all those legs creepy crawling up your trouser leg.

#10 Army Ants
Ants are so numerous that the total weight of the world's ants rivals that of humanity. Army ants are polymorphic, meaning that different ants in the colony have different appearances, and vary in length between 3 - 12 mm (see picture).
Why they are terrifying: They can eat snakes and other creatures that are much, much bigger than them, just by overwhelming them and then tearing them apart with their pincers and dissolving them in acid. The best defense if you ever run into a colony is to stay completely still, as they detect their prey by movement.

#11 Assassin Bug
There are many different species of so-called assassin bugs (within the Reduviidae family). They've earned themselves this nickname because they are known to attack quickly and rather violently.
Why they are terrifying: Firstly, some of which can transmit disease to humans such as Chaga's disease. Also, after killing their prey by stabbing them with their long, sharp beaks (called a rostrum), these bugs inject enzymes into prey which softens the insides, ready to be sucked out like a delicious organ smoothie. One particular species found in Malaysia (A. petax) even glues the empty corpses onto its back using sticky secretions, wearing them as a form of armor. I sure as hell would not mess with something covered in dead bodies, jeez.

#12 Saddleback Caterpillar
These guys are so cute. They look like they have a little jumper on. They are found all over the southern parts of the united states.
Why they are terrifying: Because you want them to be your friend, but they really do not want to be your friend. They are covered in venomous hairs and spines and will arch their back if you touch them to get as many spines into you as possible. Not so cute now.

#13 Jewel Wasp
The Jewel Wasp, or Emerald Cockroach Wasp (Ampulex compressa), will make you even more glad that you are not a cockroach. It's a parasitoid wasp that uses cockroaches as a live food supply for its developing larva, and it manages to coax this poor unsuspecting bug into playing host in a very scary up way.
Why they are terrifying: They start life like little alien extras bursting from the chest cavity of their victims... what's not creepy about that?

#14 Giant Weta
So, these insects aren't really scary when you compare them to the previous insects, but if you stumbled upon something this huge whilst taking a stroll I bet you'd let out a squeal.
These guys (genus Deinacrida) are found in New Zealand and can grow to be three times the weight of an average house mouse, making them one of the world's heaviest insects. In 2011, the largest weta documented so far weighed in at 71 grams. For some reason, the discoverer decided to feed the insect a carrot (as shown in header image), as one does, which it was able to devour on because it was so freaking huge. Kind of cute in a very, very weird way.
