BurbleChaz

Mon Nov 20 23:54:10 2006

Venomous Things

...so don't get bitten.

Since I've seen two snakes while pottering about on trails, I thought I'd find out whether any of them can chase a mountain bike down, bite the rider and eat the whole lot. Executive summary: No. Recommendations: Avoid honey farms.

This article (caution - includes pictures) has some good data. Between 1980 and 2004, there where 38 deaths from snake bite in all of Australia. A good number of these were caused by people trying to hunt down and kill snakes. Over to you, Charles Darwin. If you take the simple metric of 'Most people killed per year', the most dangerous venomous creature in Australia isn't Australian. The European Honey Bee kills around ten people a year.

The weather has finally improved. About 30 degrees, reasonably calm and sunny today. Meteorology, entomology and herpetology, all in one blog post. Consider yourselves educated.


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Last modified: Thu Aug 31 22:46:27 AUSEST 2006