This past January, Nintendo dropped a massive free update for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”—a Switch 2 Edition with 4K visuals, 12-player online sessions and a whole resort hotel—and millions of players flooded back to their islands like it was 2020 all over again. Nintendo’s own president confirmed the update succeeded in pulling “many consumers who had taken a break from the game” back in. The message was clear: Animal Crossing season is back.

In the game, crossing paths with an animal means one of two things—a wholesome chat or a new bug for your collection.

In real life, the stakes are considerably higher. Turns out a lot of animals are significantly less friendly than Nintendo’s offerings.

Some animals rely on speed. Others rely on strength. A few rely on being small. But they can all kill you before you ever notice them.

All five animals on this list share one quality: if you run into them, the odds are not in your favor.

Here are the five animals I would least want to cross.

Good news: Animal Crossing doesn’t include crocodiles. It does, however, include plenty of alligators. Here’s the difference: crocodiles usually have narrower, more V-shaped snouts, while alligators have broader, more U-shaped snouts. That said, “not a crocodile” does not mean “not dangerous.” Alligators are still powerful predators with crushing bite force, sharp teeth and explosive speed over short distances. Image Capture: Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Imagine you’re on your island, minding your business, and suddenly you’re face-to-face with a crocodile.

Step one: run. Except—good news and bad news—crocodiles can hit 20 mph on land.

Step two: climb a tree.

Also bad news: crocodiles can climb trees.

Step three: swim for it.

Terrible idea.

The water is literally their home court. Their primary hunting strategy is to grab prey with their teeth and drag it underwater until it drowns.

And those teeth? Crocodiles generate a bite force of up to 3,700 pounds per square inch—by comparison, human jaws top out around 150.

Their hide is thick enough that it can deflect knives and even small-caliber bullets.

Your escape options are: run (no), climb (no), swim (no), negotiate (also no).

The crocodile has answers for everything.

The Cassowary is evidence in itself that dinosaurs are walk among us. Photo Courtesy of: Summerdrought, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. (G.Winterflood)

When people talk about dangerous birds, they picture eagles or hawks.

They are wrong.

Allow me to introduce the cassowary—a flightless rainforest bird from Australia and New Guinea that the San Diego Zoo and the Guinness Book of World Records have both called the world’s most dangerous bird.

At 5 to 6 feet tall and up to 170 pounds, this animal looks like someone left a velociraptor in the rainforest and forgot about it.

Here is the cassowary’s offensive arsenal: a headbutt with a helmet made of solid keratin; a forward kick powerful enough to break bones; a 5-inch dagger claw on each foot designed for exactly this purpose; a top speed of 31 mph through dense forest; and, the finishing move, a vertical leap of up to 7 feet—feet-first, claws out, aimed at you.

They have recorded more than 200 attacks on humans, and 75 percent of attacks occur because people tried to feed them.

The cassowary doesn’t need a reason. It needs an opportunity.

The crocodile can only hurt you in a handful of ways.

The cassowary is basically five weapons stacked inside a bird costume, and that versatility is exactly why it lands ahead.

You’d better brush up on your snail identification skills: “Animal Crossing’s” sea snails are harmless collectibles, but real-life freshwater snails can carry parasites that make them far scarier than they look. Image Capture: Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Here is where things get unsettling.

The freshwater snail is roughly an inch long. It does not have teeth, claws or a casque made of keratin.

It can’t outrun you. It might not even know you’re there.

It doesn’t need to.

According to the World Health Organization, freshwater snails carry schistosomiasis—also called “snail fever”—a parasitic disease caused by worms the snails carry and transmit through the skin of people wading or swimming in infected water.

The WHO estimates the disease is responsible for around 200,000 deaths per year, with hundreds of millions more living with chronic infection. Organs fail. It happens quietly, over time, starting in an ordinary lake on an ordinary afternoon.

The crocodile is terrifying because you can see it coming.

The freshwater snail is terrifying because you cannot.

It wins its spot on this list entirely on the principle that a threat you don’t detect is worse than one you can, at least theoretically, outrun.

Don’t let the pink sweater fool you—this is still one of the few animals on Earth that might look at you and think, “lunch.” The heart on its chest is cute, but make no mistake: a polar bear is fully prepared to devour yours. Image Capture: Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons

There is a saying in bear country: if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s black, fight back; if it’s white, goodnight.

That last one is not a joke. The brown bear and the black bear typically attack humans as an act of self-defense—startle them, and they react. Polar bears are different.

A full-grown polar bear can weigh up to eight times the average adult male human, run at 25-mph on land and swim for miles without tiring.

None of that is the problem.

The problem is that polar bears don’t wait to feel threatened. They are apex predators that actively hunt large prey—and in areas where natural prey is scarce, humans qualify.

Most animal encounters can be survived with the right response. A polar bear encounter is one where the right response is not to have the encounter.

Even “Animal Crossing” looked at hippos and said, “Best we can do is make them look mildly approachable.” A slightly cute makeover or not, hippos still radiate the energy of an animal that would crush your canoe, and you, and not apologize. Image Capture: Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The hippopotamus looks like it was designed during a group project where the members never met.

Stubby legs, round barrel body, tiny ears, no visible neck—it does not, at first glance, look like the animal most likely to end you.

That is part of the problem.

National Geographic reports that hippos kill an estimated 500 people per year in Africa, making them the deadliest large land mammal on Earth, roughly twice as lethal as lions.

Their jaws open to 180 degrees and generate a bite force approaching 1,800 pounds per square inch—capable of crushing a small boat in a single snap.

Their lower canines grow to more than a foot and a half long.

They can also run faster than they appear to have any right to: up to 20-mph, which, if you’re doing the math, is faster than you.

But what puts the hippo at number one isn’t the size or the speed or the jaws. It’s the unpredictability.

The polar bear is hunting. The cassowary is defending.

The hippo doesn’t require a reason.

You can be minding your business on the water, not threatening anything, and a hippo will decide it objects to your presence and act accordingly.

There is no pattern to read, no behavior to de-escalate. The combination of massive physical capability and complete unpredictability makes an encounter with a hippo the one scenario where every option runs out simultaneously.

In “Animal Crossing,” the worst thing a villager has ever done is say something mildly passive-aggressive about your furniture. In the wild, the stakes are considerably higher. 

The animals on this list aren’t villains—they’re doing what they evolved to do, in a world that increasingly overlaps with ours. That’s worth knowing, even if you’d rather just tend your island garden.

Just stay away from the hippos.