# Are there any poisonous animals besides snakes, jellyfishes, and scorpions?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-poisonous-animals-besides-snakes-jellyfishes-and-scorpions/537991>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 2, 2010, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-poisonous-animals-besides-snakes-jellyfishes-and-scorpions/537991 "2010-05-02T01:22:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-poisonous-animals-besides-snakes-jellyfishes-and-scorpions/537991/61 "2010-05-08T00:19:11Z")

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> [@Blake](#):
>
> Because such notable centres of toxicological excellence as the [Commonwealth Serum Laboratories](http://corporateresponsibility.csl.com.au/?page_id=307), [the CDC](http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/snakes/) and the [Harvard Medical School](http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2000/Jan28_2000/neurobiology.html) all refer to snakes as poisonous.

Did you read those links? The first cite is an “about us” type page which talks about the medicines they produce and includes the phrase “These range from medicines that are unique to Australia and only produced by CSL – for example, antivenoms against Australia’s unique and poisonous fauna – to medicines such as plasma therapies and influenza vaccines.” The word “snake” doesn’t appear on the page.

The CDC link is actually a paper by The National Institute for Occcupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) which tells you how to protect workers who may be out in the wild around snakes. It has 2 bullet points which urge you to train workers about poisonous snakes but the title of the page is “Venemous Snakes” and it’s all about being bitten. It’s certainly not a scientific paper and it’s not by the CDC.

The Harvard Medical School link is to a page on neurobiology about nerve cells and contains the sentence: “Channel therapeutic drugs are unusual in that they act on some states of the channel more strongly than on others, whereas unconditional channel blockers are toxins—a fact exploited by poisonous snakes, scorpions, and anemones.”

I don’t particularily care about the argument, but these “cites” are shit.

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