Is there an explanation or theory for why there are so many deadly/dangerous animals in Australia specifically?

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Meaning stuff like the Blue Ring octopus, the box jellyfish, the funnel web spider etc.

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10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are two accepted factors that play a role, although they may not be the whole story.

First, Australia is huge and mostly unsettled/wild. Unlike much of the world people haven’t (yet) totally changed the environment to suit themselves, and that includes killing the stuff they don’t like. Large parts of Australia are also warm most of the year, and that drives biodiversity.

Second, there’s a theory that when continental drift turned Australia into an island, the population of reptiles at the time was entirely venomous. Australia is a pretty harsh environment, so those animals thrived and never lost their venom, and there was no parallel population of non-venomous reptiles to diversify their genetics.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There is a very simple explanation: confirmation bias!

By the numbers, Australia does not have disproportionately many deadly and dangerous animals. To take your examples, blue ring octopuses and box jellyfishes are actually quite widely distributed, and funnel web spiders aren’t, like, unusually poisonous. There’s a couple species whose bite can kill you, but black widows are broadly distributed throughout North America, and no one talks about how deadly the US is.

Sure, Australia has a lot of venomous snakes, but it also just has a lot of snakes – as do most warm places. People from more temperate climes like North America and Europe usually don’t realize just how many reptiles warmer places (like northern and central Australia) can have.

And Australia doesn’t have any giant poisonous monitor lizards (like nearby Komodo). It doesn’t have any bears that weigh almost a ton and can bite open your skull with no difficulty like the Arctic, or even any half-ton bears like the ones found in remote parts of North America, Europe, and Asia. It has dingos, but those have nothing on wolves. It doesn’t have any spiders whose bite causes your flesh to start rotting like most of the Southern and Midwestern US. It doesn’t have any snakes that spit their deadly venom at a distance like parts of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.

But people never write about the 160 species of non-deadly snake in Australia, or all of the jellyfish they see that don’t have an incredibly painful sting. And since Australia got a reputation for being so deadly, people keep talking about it, exaggerating the fatally venomous things while downplaying the others.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It doesn’t really have that many deadly species for its size.

It’s approximately the same area as the lower 48 US states. In this fairly substantial area that’s only fairly recently touched by major human intervention there are approximately a dozen species of. Deadly snake, which are mostly both rare and non-aggressive, two species of spider known to have killed people, saltwater crocodiles, a few species of sharks and a handful of ocean oddities that are also mostly not aggressive.

Between all these there are approximately one to two human deaths per year due to indigenous wildlife.

Bees reliably kill far more people in Australia each year.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Australia is weird, life evolved there because it is an island cut off from competition. So it went down a different route, since the evolutionary pressures were contained.

There are no apex predators in Australia, a bunch of rabbits completely wrecked the whole place and the deadly dangerous animals couldn’t do shit.

So you have these animal extreames that fulfill their niche, you may have an outlier animal that is more dangerous to you, because humans didn’t co evolve with these beasties, but your average Australian animal is just weird, and less dangerous on average, they kill very few people, or even rabbits.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Many of these animals are also found throughout the pacific and PNG and Indonesia as well. I’m pretty sure they are all just holidaying here and are actually from those countries originally!

Anonymous 0 Comments

First thing to ask is, does it? I think the question you want is why do so many of the most venemous animals live in aus

I don’t know exactly, but most venemous animals are cold blooded and Australias is a large, warm continent with tropical and desert areas. That lends itself to venemous reptiles

But dangerous? We have very few wildlife deaths. I’d much rather camp in the Australian bush than in the American wilderness with the bears for example

Anonymous 0 Comments

As an Aussie who’s lived in the USA and Canada, I reckon it’s a myth

Yeah we have venomous spiders, snakes etc but you can kill them with a shovel or plugger (flip flops)

You guys have bears, moose, wolves, cougars, mountain lions, etc
You cannot kill them with a plugger

I reckon yanks hype it up “I’m going to Australia with all those dangerous animals” oooo I’m so dangerous 🤣

Anonymous 0 Comments

Salt water crocodiles are the only one that anyone really worries about if you happen to live where they live. You have to careful around the water in the North of Australia when you are fishing or go camping.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are no more deadly/dangerous animals in Australia than anywhere else. Actually, there are fewer than in continents like North America and Africa. There are also many fewer deadly diseases in Australia, and fewer plant diseases.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I dont think it’s that there are so many there, in that htere are so many there NOW.

Humanity as a whole over that last 50,000 years has done an incredible job at killing off the majority of the macrofauna on earth. It’s just that Australia…kinda escaped us as a whole.