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We have the deadliest spider, jellyfish, octopus, snake, biggest croc....... Interesting thing, of the top 10 deadly snakes, all are found in australia!
 
Sucks because I don't think we can claim deadliest spider because Brazillian wandering spider is recorded in the Guiness Book of Records as the deadliest :( I was living a lie for so long !
 
Just as an aside to the 'biggest croc' - here's a story from offshore:

“That night was the most horrible that any member of the motor launch crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left…Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive.”
 
I heard a similar story to that but it was regarding another boat and sharks ?
 
I heard a similar story to that but it was regarding another boat and sharks ?

Apparently also true... (tho a wiki reference supplied) "Infamous examples of oceanic whitetip attacks include the sinking of the Nova Scotia, a steamship carrying 1000 people, that was sunk near South Africa by a German submarine in World War II. Only 192 people survived, with many deaths attributed to the oceanic whitetip shark."

Ref (Wiki supplied) Bass, A.J., J.D. D'Aubrey & N. Kistnasamy. 1973. "Sharks of the east coast of southern Africa. 1. The genus Carcharhinus (Carcharhinidae)." Invest. Rep. Oceanogr. Res. Inst., Durban, no. 33, 168 pp.
 
One of my favourite books by Terry Pratchett is The Last Continent, a farce of Australia. Death, the eternal greek chorus of Pratchett stories, asks his library for a list of the most deadly animals in 'Fourecks' and subsequently is buried in a ton of books. After digging himself out, he rephrases that question to non-deadly animals, and after a while a single piece of paper floats gently down, which has written on one side "some of the sheep."
Until I actually moved over here I believed the book to be more of a farce than it actually was, but I also thought that the meat pie floater was a joke and didn't exist. Having said that, while having to develop extra eyes in my knees to avoid a few extras I never had to worry about in NZ, I'd miss those toxic little critters if I wasn't here :)
I could go a floater right now...
 
Yip gotta love Australia. So different from the land of the long white cloud.
Heres A email I got tonight not sure of its authenticity tho

It's Bloody rough living in the country

Don't mess with a redback

An office receptionist got the shock of her life earlier this week when she found a 70cm long snake entangled in the web of a deadly spider. Tania Robertson, a receptionist at an electrical firm, came in to work on Tuesday and spotted the sight next to a desk in her office. The snake, which had obviously died from the spider's poisonous bite, was off the ground and caught up in the web.

Leon Lotz of the arachnology department at the National Museum said it was only the second time that he had heard of a snake getting caught in a spider's web It is believed the snake got caught in the web on Monday night. But it did not take the spider long to bite it. A red mark on the snake's stomach was evidence of where the spider had started eating it.

Throughout Tuesday, the spider checked on her prey, but on Wednesday she rolled it up and started spinning a web around it. She also kept lifting it higher off the ground, while continually snacking on it.

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Come to Australia , where our spiders eat our snakes !
 
Conotoxins are being studied as a source of potential drugs for treating neurological diseases
Don't worry about the terrorist threat from cone shell toxins (I prefer to think of it as a terrorist threat from cone shells, devious little sneaks, they are), I think we have a cure to the neuro issues with jags that everyone's so concerned about! haha ;).
Any retarded, twisting jags get jabbed by a cone shell & voila, cured snake!
 
Don't worry about the terrorist threat from cone shell toxins (I prefer to think of it as a terrorist threat from cone shells, devious little sneaks, they are), I think we have a cure to the neuro issues with jags that everyone's so concerned about! haha ;).
Any retarded, twisting jags get jabbed by a cone shell & voila, cured snake!

So not only do we have the world's most deadly - but we have the world's saviours too... (amongst terrorist cones).
 
Yep, who knew they were so violent yet versatile.
I wonder what sort of paradise a suicide cone shell finds when it martyrs itself.
 
Yip gotta love Australia. So different from the land of the long white cloud.
Heres A email I got tonight not sure of its authenticity tho

It's Bloody rough living in the country

Don't mess with a redback

An office receptionist got the shock of her life earlier this week when she found a 70cm long snake entangled in the web of a deadly spider. Tania Robertson, a receptionist at an electrical firm, came in to work on Tuesday and spotted the sight next to a desk in her office. The snake, which had obviously died from the spider's poisonous bite, was off the ground and caught up in the web.

Leon Lotz of the arachnology department at the National Museum said it was only the second time that he had heard of a snake getting caught in a spider's web It is believed the snake got caught in the web on Monday night. But it did not take the spider long to bite it. A red mark on the snake's stomach was evidence of where the spider had started eating it.

Throughout Tuesday, the spider checked on her prey, but on Wednesday she rolled it up and started spinning a web around it. She also kept lifting it higher off the ground, while continually snacking on it.

View attachment 173467View attachment 173468View attachment 173469View attachment 173470

Come to Australia , where our spiders eat our snakes !

Hate to burst your bubble, but that picture was actually taken in Brazil. Its not a redback, its a relative.
 
Sorry - I just realised I need to make this post relevant so it is not deleted.

Have you (anyone reading this) ever heard of the word 'potential'.

Now in Australia, cone shells, blue ringed octopuses (the correct plural of octopus is octopuses), snakes, sharks, box jelly fish, irukandji etc etc all have the POTENTIAL to be deadly... Just like electricity - a potential.

I'll start here:

(let's use Wikipedia - it's moronic enough for even morons, and mostly it is believable)

Blue Ringed Octopus:
Despite their small size and relatively docile nature, they are currently recognized as one of the world's most venomous animals. (link to discovery.com - I think that's American, they wouldn't get it wrong, would they???)

The blue-ringed octopus is 12 to 20 cm (5 to 8 inches), but its venom is powerful enough to kill humans. There is no blue-ringed octopus antivenom available.

The octopus produces venom that contains tetrodotoxin, 5-hydroxytryptamine, hyaluronidase, tyramine, histamine, tryptamine, octopamine, taurine, acetylcholine, and dopamine. The major neurotoxin component of blue-ringed octopus venom was originally known as maculotoxin but was later found to be identical to tetrodotoxin,[4] a neurotoxin which is also found in pufferfish and cone snails. Tetrodotoxin blocks sodium channels, causing motor paralysis and respiratory arrest within minutes of exposure, leading to cardiac arrest due to a lack of oxygen. The toxin is created by bacteria in the salivary glands of the octopus.[5]

Links can be found from: Sheumack DD, Howden ME, Spence I, Quinn RJ (1978 ). "Maculotoxin: a neurotoxin from the venom glands of the octopus Hapalochlaena maculosa identified as tetrodotoxin". Science 199 (4325): 188–9

Caldwell, Roy, Dr (1996-2000). "What makes blue-rings so deadly?"

I think that's a good start.

(if required, we'll look at the potential of other animals... you ready for this?)
 
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mmafan,

How many of these creatures do you have first hand knowledge of? Have you ever worked/handled any Australian elapids, inverts etc......or do you base your information on work done by others without citing the source?

Cheers,
Scott Eipper
 
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