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?
Both: sort of a highly evolved continent wide version of an angler fish.
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.
I think it’s just that competetive Aussie attitude coming through again.
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.
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.
I don’t get why they’re so hung up on poisonous creatures when drop bears 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.
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.
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)
I can’t make it any clearer: I didn’t. Goodbye.
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.
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)
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Iceland.
Easter Island?
People, please be civil. If you wish to quibble, please start a thread in another forum.
Thanks.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
[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
I just had to pipe in…please carry on about snakes and stuff…
[/nitpick]