Meaning stuff like the Blue Ring octopus, the box jellyfish, the funnel web spider etc.
In: 95
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.
Latest Answers