I just saw the NATURE show on Austalian poisonous critters…scarey! In p[articular, the Funnelweb Spider sounds nasty-those suckers are both agressive and very poisonous. Plus, they seem to like living in and around people’s houses…yechh! Could these spiders migrate to the USA aboard airplanes or as stow aways in cargo containers? I sure wouldn’t want these things around!
There are also other very nasty spiders in the land of Oz…like that white tailed spider-it bites you and infects you with flesh-eating bacteria!
Also that nettle tree sounds pretty bad…and don’t go swimming! That box jellyfish will kill you!
Why is Austarlia cursed with so many poisonous things?
Well, to answer your main question, i see no reason why a funnel-web spider couldn’t survive in many parts of the United States. I grew up in and around Sydney, Australia, and the climate in that part of the world is remarkably similar to the climate in certain parts of the US, particularly southern California. In fact, Australia is where all of SoCal’s eucalyptus trees came from.
Furthermore, funnel-web spiders in Australia have quite a broad distribution, being found everywhere from cold, wet Tasmania to warm, tropical Queensland. This suggests that they could thrive in many different areas in the US. I believe that their diet generally consists of insects and small lizards, so i can’t imagine that food would be an obstacle for them in America.
Then there’s the question of how they could get to the US in the first place. I’m not sure how easy it would be for one to sneak aboard a plane or a ship. One thing is certain—they are very tough creatures. I know from experience that they are quite hard to kill. Insect poison seems to have no effect on them, and the best way to kill one is a size 12 boot, or gasoline poured down down its burrow and then set on fire.
You mentioned the white-tailed spider. I’m no arachnologist, but the most recent news i read about the white-tailed spider suggests that some scientists now believe that the spider’s bite does not, in fact, induce flesh necrosis. Such necrosis only ever occurred in a very small percentage of people bitten by the spider, and some now believe that it must have a different cause, or that it is not just a product of the spider itself, but of other factors including the victim’s susceptibility to certain enzymes and bacteria.
The box jellyfish (or sea wasp, as it is often called) is indeed a scary creature. Luckily for those of us who grew up in Sydney, it lives mainly in the more tropical regions. It’s sting can definitely be fatal, and is apparently accompanied by some of the most horrendous pain imaginable. According to the folks at extremescience.com, the box jellyfish is the most dangerous toxic creature on earth, judged by the following criteria:
I think the latter statement is a bit hyperbolic, because it depends on how badly you get stung. If you just brush a couple of tentacles, you’ll probably get away with some extreme pain, bad scars, and some time in hospital. But if you catch a full dose of venom from multiple tentacles, you might be lucky to make it out of the water and onto the beach before you keel over dead.
I think I speak for the rest of the world when I say it’s time to nuke Australia. Hey, no offense, but we just can’t take the chance of those sorts of critters spreading. We’re still suffering from fireants and killer bees- we don’t need any other sort of import deadset on killing us.
Sorry, but it’s just got to be done.
Nuke’m from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. 
Then pave the continent. Then nuke it again.
Spiders…
shudder
Probably due to geographic isolation and mostly desert climate. Deserts are suited to much smaller animals and many of them use alternate means of defense such as venom. North America has both regions and consequently both kinds of animals. Head to the northern rockies and you’ll find big eleven foot long grizzly bears with huge, razor sharp claws and big pointy teeth. We don’t get a lot of those in southern Arizona, just some little black bears in the mountains. If it’s pointy, bitey, stabby, stingey, and has venom we have that. There are only two venomous lizards in the world and we have one of them, the gila monster. The other which is related, the mexican beaded lizard is found further south in the same desert. We have all varieties of venemous spiders, scorpions and stinging insects but box jellyfish don’t have widespread distibution in the Arizona-Sonora desert.
The weirdness of Oz’s critters is where the geographic isolation comes in. If things were reversed we’d consider your non-marsupial animals to be bizarre. The platypus though… a venemous duck-beaver. That is so messed up.
You want to nuke Australia just because of a few spiders? You’re forgetting the snakes, crocodiles, and great whites. We won’t even talk about the deadly dropbears.
Of course, nuking Oz means you will never enjoy the exquisite beauty of the Nullabor Nymphs either.
Oh, and Arizona has the Mexican Brown Spider, a close relative of the Brown Recluse whose venom causes a necrotizing wound so Oz isn’t all that unique. I know about those bad boys first hand 
Why does Australia have so many poisonous creatures? That’s a complicated question, but broadly speaking it’s because Australia is an ecological hellhole. No offence meant, that’s a statement of fact. 
Seriously, Australia is a terribly impoverished continent and a tough place for any species to make a living. The soils are extremely old and thus extremely infertile. The seas off the Eastern coast particularly are warm clear tropical waters and thus totally nutrient deficient, moreso even than the soils, and because the soils are so impoverished the oceans can’t even be fertilised by runoff. The oceans are as much a desert as the land itself.
The continent gets very little rain due to being predominantly located under a high pressure system. On an annual basis the rain tends to be highly concentrated in the summer months with long, dry periods for 8 months or more. The rainfall is also extremely erratic from year to year, with frequent droughts punctuated with floods and relatively few ‘average’ years.
What all this has meant is that there is s chronic resource shortage for most of the continent. Not just water but protein and minerals are in very limited supply in most places. That in turn has produced an ecosystem that greatly favours efficiency and an ability to conserve resources. Species that can manage to horde resources have been greatly favoured as are species that are able to grab the scarce resources as soon as the become available. That’s seen in the plants, which are almost all sclerophyllous evergreens but it’s also seen in the animals, especially the predators.
Australia has a real dearth of mammalian predators. There have only ever been 5 species of cat size or larger, and currently only 2 survive. Compare that to the 30 odd species that currently live in the US alone, and the 50 or so that lived there before human interference. That’s because mammals require a lot of resources just to keep running and predators even moreso. Impoverished ecosystems just can’t support large numbers of mammalian predators. Instead Australia has an overrepresentation of reptilian and other ‘cold-blooded’ predators that can keep ticking over in the lean times on little or no food. A python or crocodile can ride out the worst droughts and periods of overhunting on one good meal a year. A dog or of the same size still needs to eat once a month. These cold blooded predators also have the ability to invest heavily in reproduction during the good season and can afford to take a gamble on the next season being able to support the offspring, something no mammal can afford to try.
And because the cold-blooded predators dominate those with venom also tend to dominate. That’s further amplified by the need to grab nutrients when they become available. A predator that only gets to hunt once a year really needs to eat at that time, it may never see another chance. A snake or spider or other predator with potent venom greatly increases its chances of making that successful kill.
Basically Australia has an over-representation of poisonous species because of a desperate need for species to be able to ride out bad times and conserve resources. This has led to an overabundance of cold-blooded predators but also to an overabundance of predators that are able to sacrifice a small amount of energy in venom production to conserve or capture the small amount of energy available. And that’s true of the plants as well as the animals.
The problem with that reasoning is that the coastal areas, even the rainforests, have a higher number and concentration of poisonous species than the deserts. After all the funnelwebs live in wet sclerophyll or rainforest regions, not deserts.
You’re kind of right in the sense that deserts are also regions of limited resource availability and infrequent abundance that needs to be captured is a species is to thrive. And it’s for that reason that many desert communities elsewhere in the world tend to have large numbers of cold-blooded predators and poisonous species; the same challenges have produced the same solutions. The difference is that Australia is dominated by those things even outside the desert regions.
New motto for Aussie tourism–“Every third thing you touch can kill you”. :smack:
Funnel-Webs. Oh they are so cute, rearing up their hind legs and all. With the rains I’d have 40 or so in my garden right now.
As you should. Non-marsupials! Oooh eeek horrible.
That’s electric, burrowing*, venemous, duck-beaver to you. Thank you very much.
Blake,
Sorry but have you been to Australia?
Also on Funnel Webs there are different species the one referred to in most of the documentaries etc that you see is the Sydney Funnel web.
I have lived in Sydney, including on the outskirts of a national park and bushland on the northern beaches for 23 Years. In that time I have only ever seen 2 Funnel Web spiders. One was under the bark of a tree i was cutting down and it reared up at me.
I collected it and took it to the Gosford Reptile Park(they collect and milk them)
The other was on a building site i was working on.
They arent as common or scary as anyone makes out, they cant jump and are relatively slow moving. Its the whole Jaws Stigma all over again.
As for baron land, well you are again generalising. The south eastern corner Sydney through Victoria is actually quite lush with fairly good quality soil. Look at Bega, Ulladulla etc.
Our oceans poor and baron, ever heard of the Great Barrier Reef?
Living on the beaches off of sydney’s Northern Beaches I grew up snorkling, spear fishing and basically living on the beach, they are far from “desert Like” many reefs and rich marine life can be found right on the door step of sydney. manly beach is a marine reserce on the southern end surrounding Shellie Beach. Long Reef, and Fishermens beachabout 10 - 15 minutes north of manly is another marine reserve with a vast quantity anb variation of see life.
No back to the OP.
Everything you see about Astralia being so dangerous is largely hype.
Yes these creatures exist but I would rather face off with a Taipan(snake) or a Funnel web than a big ass Bear or Mountain Lion.
I have seen 1 snake in the “wild” and only 2 kangaroos isn the “wild” in the entire 23 years I have lived here. None in Sydney or populated areas.
Box jelly fish?
Well they arent exactly only found in Australia, the islands tothe north of australia suffer from the same problems.
Ocean going animals are found in amny different countries especially the nasty ones, Great Whites etc.
To be honest we have way too many creepy crawlies but you rarely see any of them. You see crap loads of Huntsman spiders (Big brown hairy “friendly” spiders) but I havent seen one for at least 3 months.
Honestly its not bad at all. I have to go through this with relatives from the UK, they are scared out of their wits about Australia, and lasttime they were here they barely slept for the first 3 nights, until they realised a crocodile wont walk into their room, to eat the many poisinous snakes that were chasing the spiders, that were runnig from the platypus, that was running from a school of box jellyfish, which were being chased by a great white shark…
Holy shit, dude. You do know what happens when you nuke dropbears, don’t you? I guess not, or you would never, ever suggest such a thing. Man, those things are scary enough already.
So I guess we’re just not mentioning the egg laying, huh?
My brother has a party trick. When the subject of deadly spiders comes up at someone else’s house, he waits till the occupier makes some shuddering comment about how glad they are they don’t have anything like that in their garden. He says: “Ya reckon?” and wanders off. Usually takes him about 10 minutes to find some.
Whether you have many Sydney Funnel Webs in your yard depends upon where you live, precisely. I have Sydneysider friends who have heaps in their ordinary suburban backyards. And yes, the danger is exaggerated, but explain that to a parent who’s 12 month old baby was stopped within seconds of picking one up to try to eat it and see how far you get.
Yep. Compared to many areas the GBR is interesting, very attractive to look at, and in terms of total biomass, a complete desert. The pretty pictures of masses of colourful fish are taken on reefs around which the fish congregate. The reefs form a tiny, tiny percentage of the total area known as the Great Barrier Reef region.
While I largely agree with you on the hype, you need to get out more, dude. I saw more 'roos than that on a one day excursion out of the city in a single day.
Dropbears, I tell ya their great when the swedish girl tourists are camping next to your tent (i love that add)
As for seeing more roos? I dont mean road kill. I just dont see many, i saw a few at the snowy mountains and thats it. Not even on my friends farm where every car has been smashed around by hitting them have i ever seen one.
A note to other dopers: Drop Bears is taken from a bunderberg rum add here in AU, where the logo is a Polar Bear. Thats as much as i can be bothered explaining
I was born in Sydney. When I was a toddler my mother was horrified to discover that at one and of the porch I always played on was a veritable swarm of funnel webs. I had been playing there on and off for months. Net number of spiders to rush and bite me? I’m still typing aren’t I?
The dangerous animal bit IS overplayed, mostly to tease gullible tourists (especially American’s, you’re all so trusting!). I’ve been stung by non lethal Jellyfish a few times, but I’ve never been bitten by anything worse than a mosquito and I really don’t go out of my way to avoid anything.
I’ve seen more deadly stuff when I lived in PNG, and even then, other than a dog who was killed by a snake (sad story – we were babysitting a friend’s dog for the weekend and out of the 15 dogs we then had it was the one to get bitten) I never saw anything venemous that was alive. I found a dead bird-eating spider in our garden once – those things are bloody massive!
Dropbears have been around a LOT longer than that ad… are you sure you’re really Australian? 
Im sure, just thats the most popularised version right now
As a child I lived on Sydney’s North Shore. We had a swimming pool and we would find at least one funnel web a week in the water, or near the pool. When they were on the bottom of the pool they looked dead, but they soon revived once taken out of the water.
As for kangaroos - naturally one doesn’t see any in suburban Sydney. But go to Canberra (the capital city) and it’s another story. At the moment the kangaroos are everywhere. The persistent drought has driven them into suburban areas where they feed on the grass. On the drive from the airport to Parliament House last week I saw at least 30, especially around the War memorial (with its luxuriant, heavily watered grass).
Like I said. You need to get out more. There’s rumoured to be a fair bit of Australia to the West of where you are now sitting, mate. Even (so they tell me) beyond Cabramatta :eek:
Wash your mouth out, grasshopper! There have been dropbears going back to the dreamtime, or at least as far back as, say, the late sixties and probably longer but I wouldn’t know. Rape and pillage of folk knowledge by fresh-ideas-bankrupt advertising executives notwithstanding. “Taken from a Bundaberg rum ad” my effin’ foot. The very idea. Harumph!
Spiders, snakes, jellyfish, dropbears, platypi, winning the America’s Cup in 1983, Fosters…the list of “reasons Australia should be nuked” goes on and on and on…
Yep, worked there as an ecologist for many years.
Hence the reason why I said the funnelwebs live in wet sclerophyll or rainforest regions, not deserts. They range from Victoria at least as far north as Fraser Island, but always in relatively wet habitats.
Yes there are tiny pockets of exception, but tiny pockets are not sufficient to support large mammalian predators, hence the reason why they are not found on small islands. And the SE corner is not fairly good quality soil, By international standard it is atrocious. There are tiny pockets of high quality recent volcanic soils around Bega but they are tiny.
Indeed, that’s some of the most nutrient deficient water on the planet. That’s why the reef is able to exist. The reef exists in large part because the water is crystal clear and enables the corals to exploit photosynthetic symbionts. And it’s clear because it won’t support algae independently. It’s a marine desert.
Corals thrive in oligotrophic waters, that’s statement of fact. If the waters become eutrophic, which is believed to be a serious problem due to the introduction of synthetic fertilisers to the nutrient poor Australian soils, the corals become choked with algae and die.
moggyAU you appear to be confusing diversity with productivity. The most highly diverse areas on Earth are, paradoxically the lowest productivity, whether the GBR, the Fynbos or the WA heathlands. There are lots of reason for that that I won’t go into now, but that;s the state of the system. The GBR has immense diversity but the productivity is extremely low. You can confirm this yourself by comparing the productivity of your East Coast fisheries to any equivalent sized fishery anywhere else in the world. The only productive fishery in that region are some of the tuna fisheries, and that is entirely dependant on nutrients from higher latitudes.
Good gracious. You really do need to get out more. You will see more than that on the drive to Western Plains Zoo. If you drive way out into the outback, you know like the ACT, you will see dozens if not hundreds.