Anyone who has been on an African game safari can name the "big five" animals on their must-see list: elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, lion and leopard. India also has its most coveted sightings: tiger, rhino, elephant, leopard and gaur.

What about Thailand? "Where are all the animals?" visitors often ask. Well, the Kingdom does have some pretty impressive mega-fauna, including tiger, leopard, bear, elephant and gaur. But poaching of wildlife is so rife in Thailand's national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, and the habitat is often so dense, that sightings are extremely rare.

You could spend a lifetime in Thailand trying to get a glimpse of its big-five species and fail. Or you can lower your expectations, re-define your list, and meet with complete success. As tourism promotion agencies learned long ago, it's not what you sell, it's how you sell it. If the wind-battering, drench-you-to-the-bone deluges of Thailand's monsoon season can be re-packaged as the "green fruiting season", can Thailand's "not-so-big-five wildlife safaris" be far behind?

Redefining the Kingdom's star species as far smaller, but no less fear-some, creatures makes good marketing sense. Almost every visitor to Thailand has excellent opportunities for close encounters with weaver ants, golden orb spiders, scorpions, tokays and blood-sucking leeches — though some of these encounters may be too close for comfort.

While Thailand's national parks support all these species in abundance, you may as well save yourself the 200-baht foreign visitor entrance fee, spend it on a half dozen local beer, and watch the wildlife show from the comfort of your bungalow. All of these critters might reveal themselves to you from your porch, bedroom, bathroom, hidden in your bed blankets, your shoes, or (heaven forbid!) inside your undershorts.

Consider the red weaver ant as our first nominee to the not-so-big five. Here's a creature that puts to shame the home range and big bite of tigers, lions and leopards. It makes the power of the rhino, elephant and gaur pale by comparison, and outweighs the lot. Surely you jest, you're thinking. But no. Ants worldwide make up in numbers and mass what they lack in size; a staggering 10 percent of all animal weight on the planet is attributable to ants. A single ant colony can contain up to 10 million individuals, and African red ants have been recorded to range over 15 square kilometres, about the same range as that of a lion pride.

As for ferocity and strength, forget the paranoid mutterings of a Dorothy tiptoeing through the Land of Oz: "Lions, tigers and bears. Oh my!" The poor girl's fears would be entirely unfounded. Lions and tigers never share the same habitat outside of zoos and circuses, and they rarely attack humans. Not so the red weaver ant. Had Dorothy casually brushed up against a bush or tree containing the leaf nest of this critter, as she skipped down that yellow brick road, she would have soon known it. It's an experience designed to remind you not to do it again.

The slightest disturbance of a plant hosting a nest of red weaver ants, and legions of soldier ants instantly sally forth to defend the colony. These soldiers long ago learned the advantages of guerrilla warfare over conventional tactics. They crawl up pants legs into underwear and down the backs of shirts before locking their jaws into your skin.

Red weaver ants inflict no venom, as do some ant species, but their bite is extremely powerful, and their pincher-like jaws lock in and never let go. So effective is this locked-jaw strategy that forest-dwelling tribes learned long ago they could use weaver ants as sutures to close cut wounds.

Of course, nature did not endow this 30 million-year-old species with such formidable jaws in anticipation of the eventual evolution of an annoyance in the form of Homo sapiens. The red weaver ant's ability to lock their jaws into one another allows them to bridge open spaces with their linked bodies, and to pull together the leaves they use to build their nests. These formidable pinchers also allow weaver ants to kill live prey. Their modus operandi? Death by stretching.

Watching a colony of these ants construct a nest from the living leaves of a tree is a spectacle more absorbing than watching a lioness prepare her den. The red weaver ant takes its name from both its colouration and its habit of weaving together leaves for its nest chamber by gently squeezing the larvae of its young into releasing silky threads. The Thais have never been known to use these larvae in silk production, as they do with silkworms, but they have come to relish red ant larvae nonetheless. Yang kai mut daeng (red ant egg salad), made with ant eggs, shredded green mango, green onion, chilli pepper and fresh lime juice, is considered a delicacy throughout the Kingdom.

It is not uncommon to see Thais, baskets attached to long poles, gathering ant eggs from nests high in the trees. Since the soldier ants are quick to follow the length of the pole to attack the intruder, these collectors must be fast and efficient. It's fair to say, in fact, that human predation of red weaver ant nests has now become the greatest threat to the species.

The golden orb web-spinning spider ranks second, in our re-definition of Thailand's big-five wildlife species. One of the largest of the world's 30,000 spider species, this critter deserves nomination, since it's large enough to prey on lizards and, some say, small birds. No one to date has actually documented this spider catching and consuming a bird, but the strength of its huge web, which extends up to 1.5 metres in diameter, and the formidable size of the female that spins it, makes such conjecture plausible.

First-time visitors to Thailand gasp in awe, and people who suffer arachnophobia totally freak out when they first come face to face with this massive spider on a forest trail. Less fortunate than those who spot the spider in advance are the gung-ho trekkers who walk right into one of their sticky webs face first. O, what a tangled web they weave, trying to disengage from the massive filaments. The experience is unpleasant enough to bring on a spider phobia even in those who never had one before.

Far better to sit quietly and watch the massive female with her shimmering gold markings, black body and red pincers mate with a male, red in colour and only a fraction of her size. Unlike the black widow spider, the female golden orb web-spinning spider does not consume her mate following copulation. She's interested only in large prey, which may account for the male's small size.

The third creature to make the illustrious "big five" list is the scorpion, an animal you're more likely to find in a Thai souvenir shop than you are in the wild. Shy and retiring by nature, scorpions hunt at night. Their dreaded stinger and the poison sac on the tip of their tail are designed more for defense than to kill prey. A scorpion's sting isn't much worse for humans than those of bee or wasp. What elevates the lowly scorpion to our big-five list is the stalking you must do, if you want to find it before it finds you. Which you do. Hidden deep in your bedsheets, inside a shoe, nestled under a rug — scorpions can be as at home inside your Thai residence as outside it. One well-heeled tourist staying at a leading southern Thailand beach resort was so paranoid of scorpions that he could hardly enjoy his holiday. He didn't see a single one the whole time he was here. Returning safely home to his Manhattan apartment, he was stung while unpacking his suitcase. It seems a Thai scorpion had also flown first-class to the Big Apple.

The fourth critter to make the big five takes its Thai name from the sound it makes. The tookay is named for it's impressive courtship and territorial call: "took-kay, took-kay, took-kay".

The tookay lizard, the largest of all geckos, looks like something out of a children's fantasy book. Pink polka dots on a purple-hued body can deceive the unwary into thinking this is something cute and cuddly. It is not. The Godzilla of the gecko world, this ferocious creature stalks and eats insects as well as those adorable little house geckos tourists love to watch clinging to the walls of their hotel rooms. Not only a menace to geckos, when cornered the tookay has a disposition that makes a rat seem benign by comparison. Not in the least intimidated by an adversary hundreds of times bigger than it, the tookay will often attack any human that dares to disturb its hiding place atop a door jam, behind a picture frame, or hidden in the thatch of a beach bungalow. The lizard's powerful jaw and needle-sharp teeth can easily puncture skin, inflicting a painful and infectious bite. The more one struggles to be released, the tighter the vice-like jaws clamp closed.

Traditionally restricted to the forest canopy, the tookay discovered long ago that human dwellings with lights attract insects and geckos. Like the tiger, lion and leopard, the tookay is a carnivore that prefers to stalk its prey in the dark. Microscopic hairs on the pads of its toes bond on the molecular level, allowing this lizard to adhere to any surface, including glass, with incredible force. A 35-centimetre lizard darting across the ceiling of your bedroom in the middle of the night to seize and swallow a loveable little gecko has more shock effect than watching a lion bring down and disembowel a zebra or gazelle.

Our final nominee for Thailand's big five is both the smallest and the blood-thirstiest of them all. Not only does this creature prey on the highest level carni-vores — lions, tigers, leopards, bears and humans — it may well consume more blood, as a species, than all the planet's meat eaters combined. From Africa to India to Thailand, find any big-five game species, and you will likely find a leech drawing its blood.

Leeches are amazing creatures. They have probably been around as long as the Southeast Asian forest itself (approximately 160 million years) and, in spite of human loathing, will likely be around long after we've departed. These simple but successful parasites wait out dry periods under wet leaf litter, then emerge when animal trails are wet. Leeches are attracted by movement, warmth, and carbon dioxide levels in the air, a sure sign that a mammal is nearby.

Leeches have suckers at each end of the body, but only one mouth part, which has three saw-like teeth. After penetrating the skin, the leech injects an extremely efficient anticoagulant that makes the blood-letting appear far more serious than the tiny wound should warrant. But leech wounds do not infect, unless excessively scratched, and they transmit no disease, so human loathing of the little critters is largely unjustified paranoia.

A feeding leech absorbs several times its own body weight in blood before dropping off its victim, and one meal may last for six months or more. Leeches satiated with blood are largely immobile, and become easy prey for foraging birds such as pheasants and jungle fowl.

The pig-tail macaque monkey has one of the most effective methods of dealing with leeches. They simply pick them off and eat them. Try it — they're pure protein.

If preying on a parasite is not to your liking, try befriending a leech instead. The few people who keep leeches as pets claim they are the best pets of all. They require little space, make great travelling companions, bond closely with their owner, and only need one small feeding from your finger every 6-12 months to stay happy and healthy.

But we really shouldn't be removing any of Thailand's big-five animals from their native habitat. It's far better you simply get a great photo to impress friends back home. The days of big-game hunting safaris are over, and mounting the heads of weaver ants, web-spinning spiders, scorpions, tokays, and leeches on your den wall will impress no one.