Everything seems calm as Scott Haraguchi's kayak bobs up and down off the island of Oahu. But suddenly - wham! An enormous tiger sharkA solitary, aggressive shark found in warm seas. comes streaking through the water and - with wide-open jaws - crashes against the small vessel. As Haraguchi cries out in alarm, it disappears as quickly as it came.

That was last Friday. The video of the incident has since become one of the most watched on the BBC's website.

Just one day earlier, 13-year-old Ella Reed survived a shark attack at a beach in Florida. She was sitting waist-deep in the water when she suddenly felt something hitting her stomach, followed by a sharp pain.

The shark "was about as big as me," she says, "and I looked down and it was biting my stomach. And that was when I just freaked out and did everything I could to get it off me."

Ella punched the shark repeatedly - but it came straight back and bit her on the leg: "It wouldn't leave me alone, so I had to use my arm and use my hand too, so it got my arm and my finger."

Luckily Ella was able to escape onto the beach. In hospital she received 19 stitches.

Florida is known as the "the shark bite capital of the world". Last year there were 16 unprovoked attacks on humans. No one was killed, but two people had to have limbs amputated.

Around the world, two fatal attacks have been recorded so far this year, one off the Mexican coast and the other in an Australian river.

Sharks are by no means the only creatures that have claimed lives recently. In January, a woman and child were killed by a polar bear in an Alaskan village. Last month a runner was killed by a brown bear in Italy.

In KashmirThe region was not allocated to either India or Pakistan in the original partition. It is still a disputed territory, as both countries claim authority over it., around 200 people have been killed and 2,000 injured by wild animals since 2011. Their attackers included leopards and brown bears.

Even smaller animals pose a threat. People have been attacked by otters in Singapore and the US, by monkeys in Thailand and even by a squirrel in New York.

According to a report published earlier this year,¹ attacks have increased steadily since 1950. It concludes that population increase has resulted in humans encroachingIntruding on or slowly advancing towards. on areas where animals used to roam undisturbed.

"If you combine the reduction of natural habitat with the expansion and spreading of human settlements, it's almost normal that the encounters between large carnivoresA carnivore is an animal that eats other animals. This is as opposed to herbivores, which only eat plants, and omnivores, which eat a bit of everything. and humans become more frequent," says one of the report's authors, Vincenzo Penteriani. "It's just a question of probability."

Another ecologist, Professor Briana Abrahms of Washington University, argues that climate change is partly responsible. As the ice in the Arctic melts, polar bears are more likely to come into contact with humans. In Africa, droughts have led to increased attacks by lions on cattle.

A Californian ecologist, Christopher Schell, warns that these patterns pose a vital question: "How do we create spaces that allow for both wildlife and humans to coexist?"

Yes: Humans have been ruining the lives of other creatures by hunting them and destroying the places where they live. No wonder they are biting back.

No: You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork or falling coconut than an animal attack. The simple fact is that with eight billion humans crowding the planet, some friction is inevitable.

Or... Humans have become too relaxed about animals. Because we are brought up on cute pictures of them in story books, and so used to seeing them on videos, we forget the danger they pose in real life.