# Why so many lethal animals in Australia? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2006, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483 "2006-03-08T03:16:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/41 "2006-03-09T12:31:24Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Why do you actually want to know this? The country already has lots of poisonous bitey things. You won, OK? Do you really need to go out and prove that even the ones you assumed were harmless are poisonous? Is there some ultimate goal of proving that every single organism on the continent is venomous? Again: tourists. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/42 "2006-03-09T12:38:08Z")
> [@Silentgoldfish](#): > > Again: tourists. Is this meant to attract tourists. As someone once said "Come to Australia. Every second thing you touch can kill you? Or are you suggesting these creatures evolving to feed on tourists? ---
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/43 "2006-03-09T12:49:53Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Is this meant to attract tourists. As someone once said "Come to Australia. Every second thing you touch can kill you? > > Or are you suggesting these creatures evolving to feed on tourists? Both: sort of a highly evolved continent wide version of an angler fish. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/44 "2006-03-09T12:50:44Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Well, yeah. > > [dan·ger·ous](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dangerous) > adj. > Being able or likely to do harm. > > Unless you wish to argue against the world’s most venomous snakes, spiders, jellyfish, fish and spiders being able to do harm I think we can consider the issue resolved. Sure I do. You know damn well that dangerousness is not the same as venomousness. There are plenty of venomous critters in Australia that have mouths too small or fangs too far back to be able to bite people easily. You also know that behaviour is an important part of dangerousness. You also know that snakes for that reason are not really very dangerous. I used to be an orienteer. I’ve nearly stepped on poisonous snakes many times. My mother stepped on a brown snake. All they want to do is get away. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/45 "2006-03-09T12:58:40Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Is this meant to attract tourists. As someone once said "Come to Australia. Every second thing you touch can kill you? > Or are you suggesting these creatures evolving to feed on tourists? I think it’s just that competetive Aussie attitude coming through again. > [@An Ocker](#): > > We take gold for poisonous snakes AND lizards! Yay! And just check out these AWESOME toads that we now got blanketing the entire country. What you got, poms? Adders and wasps? Pah! And just to join the actual debate, my impression was that until fairly recently when improved weaponry became available, things capable of taking down humans tended to be avoided rather than persecuted, for obvious reasons. Exceptions such as lion-hunts for initiation rituals and so on tend to rather prove the rule - they were regarded as being very dangerous things that proved you were a bit of a badass for attempting them. Up until very recently, human populations were tiny - I find it hard to accept that they could have much impact on populations of things like snakes and spiders (HOW many eggs?) through mechanisms other than habitat change, which dealt the fatal blow to a lot of species. Of course, post-industrial revolution that changed a lot, but that’s outside the scope of the discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/46 "2006-03-09T12:59:02Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > Is there anywhere else as safe as NZ, when it comes to creatures? As a tourist who recently tramped around NZ’s Banks Peninsula and was warned by locals about potential aggression from both sharks and seals, I would say that the native fauna isn’t **entirely** in the cute and cuddly class. (Never saw a shark, but did get a little closer to the seals than I intended—as in, “hey, that brown boulder just waved a flipper at me! Better not sit on it!”) And it may be that some of the now-extinct wildlife species were also somewhat hazardous to humans, although of course not predatory—e.g., the giant moa, before the Maori offed them all. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/47 "2006-03-09T13:05:13Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > That’s Australians for you. Being home to more poisonous snakes than anywhere else in the world isn’t good enough. Oh no, they’ll get teams of anaotmists and molecular biologists proving that they are also home to more species of posionous lizard than the rest of the world combined. > > Why do you actually want to know this? The country already has lots of poisonous bitey things. You won, OK? Do you really need to go out and prove that even the ones you assumed were harmless are poisonous? Is there some ultimate goal of proving that every single organism on the continent is venomous? I don’t get why they’re so hung up on poisonous creatures when [drop bears](http://geocities.com/muirnin/db.htm) kill more people that snakes, sharks, spiders, jellyfish, ticks and sheep combined. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/48 "2006-03-09T13:12:07Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > I don’t get why they’re so hung up on poisonous creatures when [drop bears](http://geocities.com/muirnin/db.htm) kill more people that snakes, sharks, spiders, jellyfish, ticks and sheep combined. Shhh! You don’t want to frighten the tourists away! They might go to New Zealand instead, to be eaten by marauding bands of orcs left over from shooting LOTR. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/49 "2006-03-09T13:24:52Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > If you read the thread you will note that we are **not** discussing what happens in 21s century Australia but what happened in Australia, and indeed the world, over the past 60, 000 years. Unless you are suggesting you have evidence that such behaviour has been common for those 60, 000 years? Oh, I get it. You want me to take your point _in context_, huh? You want me to think about the thrust of your argument and see what you actually must mean, and deal with that point calmly and rationally and (I expect) politely? That’s not a bad idea, actually. ---
**Author:** ![fortytwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f9ae1b/32.png) [@fortytwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fortytwo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/50 "2006-03-09T13:39:52Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > … > Is there anywhere else as safe as NZ, when it comes to creatures? I was modestly going to suggest the UK, but you don’t have football supporters do you? (I know you do have football there - we’ve got one of your players in our squad - but I don’t think it engenders the same amount of passion as it does here) ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/51 "2006-03-09T14:28:08Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > And as I pointed out above I know it is absolute bollocks when you try to use it to explain why there are so many dangerous animals in Australia. I can’t make it any clearer: I didn’t. Goodbye. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/52 "2006-03-09T14:33:44Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Reference please? I’ll admit I’m going mostly on verbal communcations from my father. However, he does have a Ph.D. in herpetology, so I tend to take his word as being reasonably informed on this topic. It is possible that later discoveries had changed the accepted view since he studied things. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/53 "2006-03-09T17:38:33Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > I don’t get why they’re so hung up on poisonous creatures when [drop bears](http://geocities.com/muirnin/db.htm) kill more people that snakes, sharks, spiders, jellyfish, ticks and sheep combined. Happy Australia Day to you. Happy Australia Day to you. Watch out for the drop bears. Happy Australia Day to you. (from a post in alt.fan.cecil-adams) ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/54 "2006-03-09T17:56:25Z")
Isn’t the more correct question: why did MORE poisonous (to humans0 creatures EVOLVE in Australia? For example: ALL spiders are venomous. However, very few species have fangs long enough to penetrate human skin. And, most do not carry highly poisonous venom, for example, an australian “funnel web” spider is very dangerous to humans-but the venom is not poisonous to canines. I suspect Autralia has a lot of arachnids 9which happen to be venous0 because the heat favors larger spiders. Venom is an ideal way to kill prey-mostly, it paralyzes the prey so that it can be consumed at leaisure. it is just an unfotunate accident that most Austalian spider’s venom is poisonous to humans. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/55 "2006-03-09T21:22:57Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Sure I do. You know damn well that dangerousness is not the same as venomousness. There are plenty of venomous critters in Australia that have mouths too small or fangs too far back to be able to bite people easily. What _are_ you talking about? Nobody in this thread has said that Australia _doesn’t_ have plenty of poisonous creatures. What I said was that Australia _does_ have plenty of _dangerous_ creatures Are you attempting to argue that because Australia has a lot creatures _incapable_ of harming humans it is therefore incapable of _also_ having a lot of creatures that are dangerous? If not the what is your point? You are making no sense whatsoever. Do you actually dispute that Australia has a lot of animals that are capable of causing harm? Do you think maybe it should tell you something that of all the people who have posted to this thread, including Colibri, you are the only one who actually disputes that Australia has a lot of dangerous creatures? > [@](#): > > I used to be an orienteer. I’ve nearly stepped on poisonous snakes many times. My mother stepped on a brown snake. All they want to do is get away. Rigggghhht? So your point would be what? That such behaviour renders them [I[incapable[/I[ of causing harm? Because if they are capable of causing harm you realise the makes them dangerous, right? Or perhaps your knowledge of English is limited enough that you don’t know what capability means? > [@Princhester](#): > > Oh, I get it. You want me to take your point _in context_, huh? No. I just want you to stop posting ignorant nonsense on board that is supposed to dedicated to fighting ignorance. Your claim that Australia doesn’t have a lot of animals capable of causing harm is clearly ignorant nonsense. Your claim that Australia has a lot creatures incapable of harming humans it is renders it incapable of also having a lot of creatures that are dangerous is not just ignorant, it’s illogical. Your claim that you can demonstrate preferential extermination without any reference to the average extermination rate is so silly It is making me chuckle. In short everything you have contributed to this thread is ignorance. You are free to take my point out of contexts as far as I am concerned, just as you are free to join the thread solely to try to posts messages apparently intended to somehow provoke or upset me by ‘giving me a dose of my own’. What does irk me somewhat however is posting material that is simply ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/56 "2006-03-09T21:41:48Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Isn’t the more correct question: why did MORE poisonous (to humans0 creatures EVOLVE in Australia? In suppose it is. But it’s easily attributed to the same cause. Animals in Australia need to be able to grab resources rapidly and with certainty when they are available. One way of doing that is through the evolution of potent venom. Venom that can kill a mouse in seconds is almost certainly able to kill a human in hours. IOW the abundance of creatures lethal to humans simply reflects the pressures to develop highly potent venom in the first place. > [@](#): > > For example: ALL spiders are venomous. However, very few species have fangs long enough to penetrate human skin. I wouldn’t say very few. Probably most, but given the hundreds of thousands of species of spiders in the world even a minority can be a lot. For example most wolf spiders or house spiders are just as capable of penetrating human skin as a red back or funnel web. IOW I suspect that there are a dozen or so spider species in the US capable of penetrating human skin. If you allow a thousand or more species of spider outside Australia that can penetrate the human skin I wouldn’t say that was very few. A distinct minority, but not few to my mind. > [@](#): > > I suspect Australia has a lot of arachnids 9which happen to be venous0 because the heat favors larger spiders. That’s certainly true, but Australia is considerably cooler than equivalent sized areas in Africa or Brazil for example, yet it doesn’t have fewer lethal spiders AFAIK. > [@](#): > > ….it is just an unfotunate accident that most Austalian spider’s venom is poisonous to humans. Most Australian spider’s venom isn’t poisonous to humans, at least in the sense that it causes no more than a bee-sting reaction when bitten. There is one closely related group of Australian spiders, the funnelwebs, that are poisonous to humans but last time I checked those is the only deadly spider native to Australia. The red back of course is an introduced nasty. ---
**Author:** ![bagkitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ab992/32.png) [@bagkitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bagkitty)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/57 "2006-03-09T23:35:04Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > I have no idea why Australia has all the scary, killing beasties it does but I would like to point out that this is one cross-Tassie competition New Zealand will never win, YAY. > > Is NZ the country with the safest wildlife? Other then the native Katipo spider and a couple of dodgy Aussie non-lethal spider implants (and the sea snakes someone mentioned…though we never see them) and perhaps the odd great white shark, pretty much everything here is user friendly. > > Is there anywhere else as safe as NZ, when it comes to creatures? Iceland. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/58 "2006-03-10T00:06:04Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > Is there anywhere else as safe as NZ, when it comes to creatures? > > Aussies win everything maybe being bitten, stung etc is natures payback. 😃 Easter Island? ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/59 "2006-03-10T03:19:24Z")
People, please be civil. If you wish to quibble, please start a thread in another forum. Thanks. - **xash** General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483/60 "2006-03-10T04:55:50Z")
> [@Anne Neville](#): > > Polar bears are very dangerous, but you’d only run into them in northern Alaska, and probably not even then unless you went out on the sea ice. [nitpick] One of the best places in the world to see a polar bear is actual in northern Manitoba, Canada. [Churchill, Manitoba to be exact](http://www.townofchurchill.ca/cim/75C122_207T4906T278T8353T413T16705.dhtm) I just had to pipe in…please carry on about snakes and stuff… [/nitpick] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-so-many-lethal-animals-in-australia/347483.md?page=4)