Most dangerous

GEOGRAPHIC EXTREMES SOCIETY

 

AUSTRALIAN RECORDS

 

Australians have a curious affection for their country’s dangerous animals, taking great national pride in the notion that ‘everything is far more dangerous here’. But is this reputation deserved? The notoriety of the deadly creatures to be found ‘Down Under’ has been somewhat distorted overseas, with the majority of people indoctrinated into believing that Australia is a wild, crazy place where every animal has a desire to bite, sting, maim, or kill you. The truth of the matter is vastly different. As we’ll see, Australia is a rather benign country, both to reside and travel around. There’s nothing much out there that poses an imminent threat to everyday life … unless, of course, you like swimming among seal colonies where great white sharks might lurk, or you enjoy frolicking in tropical mangrove swamps where crocodiles skulk nearby.

By and large, this continent is an inordinately safe place. To me, it seems that maybe, Australians feel inadequate because they lack predatorial species like lions, tigers, or bears inhabiting the continent. As a result, we mythologise our wildlife to appear far more dangerous than they are in reality.

Throughout the country, museums, universities, wildlife parks, and other authoritative sources all differ in how they rank Australia’s most dangerous animals. Recently, the staff at the Australian Museum in Sydney developed and published, a ranking system for animals regarded as dangerous to humans, as a rough guide for citizens and visitors alike. They named this Australia’s Deadly 30, no doubt appropriating the long-running ‘Deadly 60’ television series hosted by the renowned naturalist Steve Backshall.

The Australian Museum table has only one non-native animal, the European honey bee on the list and remarkably has animals like the bluebottle jellyfish who has had no deaths at all linked to it.

Danger rating: 10/10

  1. Box jellyfish

Danger rating: 9/10

  1. Honeybee
  2. Irukandji

Danger rating: 8/10

  1. Bull shark
  2. Eastern brown snake
  3. Saltwater or estuarine crocodile
  4. Sydney funnel-web spider

Danger rating: 7/10

  1. Blue-ringed octopus
  2. Coastal taipan
  3. Common death adder
  4. Cone shell
  5. Dugite or spotted brown snake
  6. Mulga snake
  7. Red-bellied black snake
  8. Tiger shark
  9. Tiger snake
  10. Great white shark
  11. Yellow-bellied sea snake

Danger rating: 6/10

  1. Bluebottle
  2. Common lionfish
  3. Collett’s snake
  4. Highland copperhead
  5. Inland taipan
  6. Redback spider
  7. Reef stonefish
  8. Smooth toadfish
  9. Blue-bellied black snake

Danger rating: 5/10

  1. Australian paralysis tick
  2. Bull ant
  3. Giant centipede

The Australian Museum employs some of Australia’s most eminent naturalists and wildlife professionals. I have great respect for their work, and their publications are always well-considered and scrutinised by a very professional team. However, the table above fails to recognise that the most dangerous animals in Australia, apart from humans, are domesticated farm animals and household pets. The Australian government body, The National Coronial Information System or NCIS, records the deaths of humans in Australia and the causation of those deaths. Back in 2011, the published figures for deaths attributed to animals for over ten years (2001-2010) in Australia are shown below. The list certainly makes for interesting reading.

 

Number of animal-related deaths, by most frequent animal and mechanism of injury

Horse, pony, donkey 77 – Crushing, trampling / struck, motor vehicle accident

Cow, bull, bovine 33 – Motor vehicle accident, crushing, penetrating force

Dog 27 – Bitten, fallen over, motor vehicle accident

Kangaroo 18 – Includes motor vehicle accident

Bee 16 – Stings

Shark 16 – Bitten

Venomous snake 14 – Bitten

Crocodile 9 – Bitten

Emu 5 – Motor vehicle accident

Other (inc fish, sheep, goat, camel, cat, jellyfish, etc) 39

Total: 254 animal inflicted deaths

These findings show that horses, cattle, and dogs are the top three most dangerous animals in Australia. Their report goes on to rate Queensland as the most dangerous place for deadly animal encounters, and also that males are more likely to die from an animal encounter if they’re between the ages of 20 and 60.

It comes as a surprise to many, including myself, to discover that kangaroos and emus are in the top ten of animal-related fatalities. Not only that but kangaroos were responsible for more deaths than sharks, snakes or crocodiles.

All this goes to show that rating the most dangerous Australian animals is highly subjective. Most people will never encounter a box jellyfish, handle cone shells, stumble across an inland taipan, find themselves swimming with tiger sharks, or be bitten by giant centipedes during their lifetime. But they do drive on country roads where the danger of a bounding kangaroo coming over the bonnet and through the windscreen remains a real concern.

 Most venomous snakes

When scrutinising venomous animals, the first animals that pop into most people’s minds are snakes. However, snakebite is considered a minor risk in Australia. In developing countries, where medical treatment and antivenom is scarce, snake bite is a huge risk in people’s day to day lives. On average, snakes claim over 125,000 lives per year around the world, but in Australia, less than two people annually die from snakebite.

Australians have been raised on the factoid that the Top Ten venomous snakes in the world reside here. This information is based on 40-year-old research that is flawed and sadly well out of date. However, the reputation Australia has as a deadly, dangerous realm of snakes is not entirely undeserved. The country is remarkable in that 70% of its land snakes are venomous. While Australia possesses only around 6% of the world’s total species of snakes both on land and sea, these include roughly 25% of all the venomous snakes and 40% of all the highly-dangerous, front-fanged elapid snakes.

In Australia, there are diversity hot spots for land snakes, and unsurprisingly these generally correlate with the greatest incidence of snake bites. These regions of north-east Queensland, south-east Queensland/northern New South Wales, the Pilbara, and south-east South Australia tend to have overlapping ranges of a great proportion of Australia’s highly dangerous snake species. It’s also true that Australian venomous snakes are amongst the most common of all the Australian snakes encountered in backyards, farms, and the bush.

Traditionally, scientists measure how venomous an animal may be, by looking at the LD50 dose. It is a score given to estimate how much toxin would be needed to kill 50% of a group of test animals, usually mice or rats. This method of evaluation has somewhat fallen out of favour recently, due to significant differences in results obtained in administering toxins to lab rats. Most testing injects the toxin subcutaneously, that is, into the fat below the skin. However, a more severe reaction can result whether intentionally or by operator error, when toxins are injected intravenously or into muscle tissue. But still, LD50 remains one of the best ways to assess the lethality of the venom.

The majority of deaths from snakebite in Australia are attributed to the group of brown snakes. There are thirteen species of brown snakes, which range Australia-wide except for Tasmania. From 2000 to 2016, the NCIS reported that brown snakes were responsible for 23 out of 35 deaths attributed to snakebite.[7] That accounts for roughly two-thirds of deaths, although the majority of brown snake species only have short fangs and a low venom yield.

The front-fanged, venomous snakes, known as elapids, made the migration from Asia to the Australia/New Guinea region approximately twelve million years ago where they show up in the fossils of Riversleigh in north-western Queensland. Elapid snakes include almost all of Australia’s venomous snakes, along with cobras, mambas, and America’s coral snakes. They’re also closely related to the extremely venomous sea snakes around the world.  The venoms of Australian elapids contain a unique compound known as Factor Xa. Australian elapids, as an entire group, recruited Factor Xa as a coagulant toxin just after their first ancestor swam ashore. This Xa compound turns normally-fluid blood which courses through our arteries and veins, into the consistency of a thick soup. The worst effects of this include stopping the distribution of oxygen and causing strokes and convulsions in victims. What caused them to evolve this compound is not known, but environmental factors like the immunity of small marsupials to toxic compounds may have played a role. If Factor Xa sounds frightening to you, then discovering what the brown snakes and taipans have further evolved will shock you. These snakes enhanced this compound into an even more virulent compound, known as Factor Va. This compound takes the soupy consistency of Factor Xa one step further, turning the victim’s blood into the consistency of jelly.

It’s these two factors that make the Australian elapid snakes stand above all others in terms of toxicity. Of those which possess Factor Va, it’s the eastern brown snake that produces the fastest-acting compounds, closely followed by Ingram’s brown snake and the gwardar, or western brown snake.

But more questions need to be answered. What caused elapid snakes to develop these compounds? Has there been an arms race in Australia between the snakes and their prey? Had the prey developed immunity to standard elapid venoms, requiring the snakes to create new compounds to knock down their quarry? The answer to this riddle may lie in the wilds of south-west Western Australia.

In Australia, there are over 100 species of plants known as poison pea, and the south-west of the country has the highest concentration of these. Within the foliage of the poison pea are compounds known widely as ‘1080’, or monofluoro acetic acid. Many people would be aware that both agriculturalists and conservationists use 1080 to control wild dogs, foxes, and feral cats in the bush. In south-west Western Australia, the herbivores that consume the poison pea build a resistance to the 1080 toxins. Could this also mean that Australian marsupials were capable of absorbing snake toxins more readily than their prey counterparts in South-East Asia? There is still much to be learnt as to why Australian snakes appear to have much more toxic venom than they apparently need to render their prey immobile.

Most Dangerous Australian Snakes

As we’ve seen, there’s more to snake bites than simply how potent the toxin is. I’m a big fan of how the Queensland Museum staff previously ranked dangerous snakes. This form of assessment seems to have fallen out of favour, which is a shame because I believe there is some real merit to it. They used five criteria:

  1. How long the fangs are. Will they penetrate clothing, footwear, and inject into muscle tissue?
  2. How much venom the snakes deliver, known as the venom yield. Some snakes deliver a dry bite as a defensive mechanism; some snakes deliver multiple bites injecting huge amounts of venom.
  3. What is the toxicity of the venom, in this case, its LD50? I would expand this to assess the Va and Xa compounds.
  4. Bite frequency. How often has it been implicated in human attacks?
  5. The general disposition of the snake. Is the snake typically a placid or nervous animal?

Using these criteria, the museum staff would assign one to five points for each criterion, adding them to get a score out of 25 for an indication of how dangerous the snake is when encountered in the wild. According to the Queensland Museum, the coastal taipan is by far the most dangerous snake in Australia with a massive 21 out of 25 points, only losing points for venom toxicity (three out of five points), and both venom yield and bite frequency (four out of five points). If we apply the same criteria to other snakes around the world, it will put Australian snakes into perspective. Snakes such as the carpet viper, Russell’s viper, the black mamba, and the king cobra would all rank equal to or above the coastal taipan.

Australia’s most dangerous spider

Spiders would have to rank next in what people most fear on land. There are only three spiders in Australia that have been confirmed as life-threatening to humans: the Sydney funnel-web spider, the redback spider, and the introduced recluse spider. The spider renowned as the most venomous in the world is the Sydney funnel-web spider.

There are over forty separate, but similar-looking species of funnel-web spiders in Australia. They range from Gladstone in Queensland south to Tasmania, and west to the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. Every single one of these species has sharp, powerful fangs capable of penetrating fingernails, clothing and footwear. But of all these different but closely related funnel-web species, it is only the Sydney funnel-web that has, so far, been implicated in the death of humans. Funnel-webs on Queensland’s Darling Downs are bigger and can inject as much venom, but of all fourteen known bites of this northern species, none has caused a death. Since the first recorded Sydney funnel-web fatality in the 1920s, fourteen people have died from their bites. The enigmatic scientist, Struan Sutherland, developed an anti-venom in the 1980s, and since then only one person has died, with late presentation to the hospital listed as contributing to his death.

Indeed, it appears that all funnel-web bites should be treated as highly toxic, however, the Sydney funnel-web venom seems to be a fluke of nature as to why humans succumb so readily to its toxins. When testing funnel-web spider venom on laboratory rats, results showed that only a very large dose was toxic to these rodents. This study has led to an intensive examination of the Sydney funnel-web venom, leading to the discovery of a toxic peptide within the atracotoxin compound that was responsible for human deaths. When other spiders in this genus were investgated, six other funnel-web species exhibited a venom peptide that mimics those of the Sydney funnel-web. It may prove to be that the Sydney funnel-web’s proximity to dense, urban populations is the main reason why it has been the only one of this species implicated in human deaths.

Ecologists still argue whether the redback spider is an Australian native species. The first records of the spider came from the port towns of Rockhampton and Bowen in Queensland during the 1870s. The redback spider was seemingly unknown to European and Indigenous Australians until this time. These Queensland port towns were entry points for indentured Melanesian workers brought to work in the sugar cane fields and the agriculture sectors during the late 1800s. My favourite postulated theory, and there are many, explaining the absence of redback reports before 1870, was that this spider was unwittingly imported by the Melanesian workers, and quickly proliferated throughout Australia. Closely related species of the redback spider are found in the South Pacific, as well as Europe and the Americas.

Perhaps, Australia’s redback spiders originated in small village huts in New Caledonia, Vanuatu, New Guinea, or the Solomon Islands, only finding permanent human structures once unwittingly arriving on these shores. Perhaps previous landfalls by young redback spiders blowing in on gossamer threads did not take a liking to the temporary structures of Indigenous Australians? Redback spiders appear to show a strong preference for human dwellings, much like the Malaysian house gecko that is steadily colonising Australia today. Redback spiders were quick to colonise houses throughout Australia, within 50 years they were found from Perth to Cairns and Adelaide to Darwin.

Before the introduction of the redback spider antivenom, fourteen deaths were attributed to this spider, with only two deaths since the anti-venom treatment began half a century ago. The last fatality was as recent as 2016, with the death of a young bushwalker. The young man inadvertently transported one in his backpack and was bitten under the arm.

Australia’s most dangerous ants, bees and wasps

Some of the most dangerous stinging animals are bees, wasps, and ants. The associated allergic reactions or anaphylaxis from their stings are tragically common and seem to be increasing in prevalence. Unsurprisingly, it’s the introduced bee that tops the list for admissions to hospitals, and deaths caused by toxicity in Australia.

Some native ant, bee, and wasp stings also result in anaphylactic reactions. Australia is home to an ancient group of ants, known variously as jumping ants, jack jumpers, or bull ants, that have a lineage going back more than 120 million years. These ants pre-existed bees and wasps, retaining many ancient features, including venom. Despite being regarded as ancient, they exhibit many advanced traits such as grooming and visual recognition of landmarks. All 100-odd species of jumping ants have lethal stingers that they use for both defence and attack, and the resulting envenomation has caused multiple human deaths, once again due to allergic reactions.

Rightly or wrongly, the Guinness Book of Records rates the most dangerous ant species as one of the jack jumper ants. There are quite a few of these jumping ant species, and one of the largest is commonly known as the bull ant. A study on anaphylaxis caused by jumping ants has found that many allergic responses followed after recent stings from wasps and bees, that appears to be priming the victim’s system for a greater reaction to the jumping ant sting. Numerous people still die from jumping ant stings, mainly in Tasmania. A study of deaths from 1980 to 1999, found that five patients died in Tasmania and one in New South Wales.

Most venomous mammal

The next venomous animal on our list to consider is the primordial platypus. This mammalian oddity is a jumble of animal appendages that appears to be incongruous to what we consider to be a mammal. On top of the list is a spur, resembling a snake fang or a sharpened cockspur, attached to hind legs, near what we would consider to be its ankle. The male platypus is the only mammal with specialised venom glands, able to deliver an extremely painful sting. There are, however, a whole host of mammals that have developed toxic saliva. Some rodents such as moles, shrews, solenodons, and vampire bats have developed saliva laced with toxins. Other mammals such as the African-crested rats and some hedgehogs concentrate the venoms of other animals such as toads, or noxious tree saps on their fur and spines to make themselves poisonous to other predators.

All this considered, the male platypus is unique, in that it stings and envenomates with a sharp spur. The female platypus discards their venom spurs while still juveniles. The only other egg-laying mammals, the echidnas, have retained their spurs but discarded their venom glands. Humans who have been envenomated by the platypus have described it as excruciating pain, followed by much swelling. To date, no human fatalities have occurred, and it appears that the venom delivered by the platypus is primarily used only as a defence mechanism. Scientists still debate the reason why male platypuses have retained this venomous function and why the female has lost hers. It’s unclear whether this mechanism assisted in defending territory from other males, for subduing females during copulation, attacking another young male platypus, or perhaps that it’s simply a quirky evolutionary remnant.

Most venomous octopus

Another charismatic and dangerous animal is the blue-ringed octopus. When visiting coastal rockpools, parents warn every Australian child to beware of this highly venomous animal. Most people regard these species as being purely Australian, but the reality is, there are four quite similar species whose range stretches considerably further than this continent’s waters. The quintessential Australian species is the southern blue-ringed octopus, which occurs from south-east Queensland to southern Western Australia. The greater blue-ringed octopus has a much wider distribution, from northern Australia, west to Sri Lanka, north to Japan, and east to Vanuatu. The blue-lined octopus is restricted from southern Queensland to Eden in southern New South Wales. The fourth species is known only from a couple of specimens found in the Indian Ocean. The most venomous of these four species are the southern blue-ringed and the blue-lined octopus, however, all species have been known to cause human fatalities. The greater blue-ringed octopus caused the first recorded fatality at Darwin’s East Point. Two spearfishermen came ashore, and one found an octopus in their catch bag, which he threw at his companion. Jokingly, his friend picked up the tossed octopus, placing it on his shoulder as if it were a pet. Although the man didn’t feel the bite, he soon complained of a dry mouth, and his condition worsened before he rapidly succumbed and died. Only afterwards was a bite found and the perpetrator identified.

The blue-ringed octopus’s favourite prey includes crabs and other small crustaceans. These octopuses are highly unusual in that they don’t manufacture their own toxins, but rather they store bacteria in a modified salivary gland, where they then harness the bacteria’s ability to produce deadly toxins. When food is plentiful, the blue-ringed octopus will locate its prey and herd it into a corner of the rockpool, before releasing their toxic saliva into the water near their quarry. The targeted prey then ingests the saliva from the surrounding water, slowly becoming paralysed, which then allows the octopus to eat its victims alive leisurely. When food is scarce, the octopus must resort to hunting down and physically grappling with its prey (risking damage to its many limbs) before biting into the creature and spitting the toxic saliva into the wound.

These octopuses have harnessed a very powerful toxin. Once bitten, the muscle systems are paralysed and shut down. The powerful neurotoxin is known as tetrodotoxin or TTX, and it inhibits nerve impulses. One of the first symptoms of envenomation is the cessation of breathing, leading to total paralysis. Studies on the greater blue-ringed octopus in the Philippines have shown six bacteria strains to be the primary producers of the TTX toxin, which is estimated to be 1,200 times more toxic than cyanide. TTX can also be found in other animals, such as poison dart frogs from South America, and on pufferfish spines. Children and overseas visitors have proved to be most at risk from blue-ringed octopus bites. A mere twenty-five grams of TTX has the potential to kill seventy-five humans, and an octopus’s estimated single dosage can kill up to seven humans with one bite.

Envenomation by blue-ringed octopus can leave victims aware of their surroundings, yet completely incapable of any reaction, movement, or speech. The good news, if there is any, is that the TTX toxin leaves no lasting effects in the body. If the victim can be kept alive by artificial respiration, there’s a strong chance of survival with no ill effects to the nervous system once the toxins wear off after an hour or two. If you ever find yourself or others in this predicament, persist with resuscitation. Only three reported deaths have occurred due to blue-ringed octopus’ envenomation, but in Indonesia, the Philippines, and the South Pacific, many more are suspected of going unrecorded.

Most venomous jellyfish

The dubious accolade for the most lethal marine animal capable of envenomating humans is most often awarded to the box jellyfish that inhabit Australian waters. Since records began, an estimated total of sixty-nine people has died in Australia due to box jellyfish. Box jellyfish stings occur mostly in the northern wet season from October through to May, but can potentially happen at any time of the year.

To further confuse the matter, there are many species of box jellyfish (class Cubozoa) species right through the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans. Different box jellyfish species range from Sri Lanka to Vanuatu and Japan, down to northern Australia. Swimmers have been stung by various species of Cubozoans as far south as Bermagui on the south coast of New South Wales.

Box jellyfish have evolved anatomical characteristics that are some of the most advanced among all jellyfish species. Unlike other jellyfish species that passively drift with currents, box jellyfish can swim relatively efficiently against currents, using a pulsating motion with their bells to slowly move through the water, trailing their tentacles behind. They actively pursue their prey of small fish and crustaceans using an array of vision organs in the sides and edges of the bell.

It seems that Australia is not unique in ‘owning’ the box jellyfish. The discovery of a new species of box jellyfish was announced when a recent fatality occurred off the coral-bound islands of southern Japan. Further south, Dr Paul Cornelius of the British Museum of Natural History, estimates twenty to forty deaths per year in the Philippines can be attributed to related box jellyfish species.

Australia, however, seems to possess the largest and most poisonous of all the box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri). A University of Hawaii researcher has published an LD50 of 0.04 mg/kg for Australia’s box jellyfish, ranking it as the world’s most venomous jellyfish. The first deaths recorded against this jellyfish go back to the 1890s. In those early days, most of the deaths were blamed on the Portuguese man-o-war, or what Australians call blue bottles. During the mid-1900s a Cairns doctor, Hugo Flecker, became convinced there was another culprit killing people. The breakthrough in identifying the offending species came off Cardwell in 1955 when a young boy died. Upon Flecker’s urging, the police netted and caught three jellyfish, including a box jellyfish whose tentacles matched the remnants of tentacles left on the dead boy. Another Cairns doctor, John Barnes, suggested there may be other species implicated in jellyfish deaths, and went in search of the smaller species. Barnes eventually discovered the Irukandji stinger, whose venomous notoriety grows as it moves south with warming currents along the Queensland coastline. The media are now quick to label any mysterious sting to the exotic-sounding Irukandji.

Most venomous fish

The dangerous reputation of northern Australia’s beaches doesn’t end with box jellyfish. Growing up in this area, the fish my parents most feared were stonefish. My brother and I would always be out in some estuarine creek wading around barefoot, seemingly begging to tread on these deadly creatures. The danger was real, but are stonefish unique to Australian shores? The Queensland Museum rates the stonefish as the most venomous of all fish, which is a huge claim because there are a lot of fish in the world’s oceans that utilise venoms. The stonefish has thirteen stout spines arranged along its backbone, ready to raise their spines and release their packet full of venom into an unprotected foot. That venom has an LD50 of 38 μg/kg as measured in a reef stonefish in Hawaii.

Several stonefish species range throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and even in the Mediterranean, a stonefish was recently discovered where it probably entered via the Suez Canal. They may soon become a fixture in all the world’s oceans. The two stonefish species in Australia are the more common estuary stonefish, and its close cousin, the more potent reef stonefish. The estuary stonefish favours sediment-rich shorelines, from Coffs Harbour in northern New South Wales to Shark Bay, in Western Australia. The reef stonefish is the more widespread species worldwide, and in Australia, it ranges from Coffs Harbour to Lancelin just north of Perth.

Most virulent stinging plants

Much has been made of the toxicity of stinging trees in Australia. Amateur botanists often cite the Gympie-Gympie stinger (Dendrocnide moroides) as the most virulent of all the world’s stinging plants. As a young guide in north Queensland, I subscribed to this often-repeated factoid as well, though in retrospect I knew I should have realised the stories were overblown. It wasn’t until I worked in New Guinea that I chanced upon other species of the stinging plants from this same genus Dendrocnide, which I duly tested for their potency. I quickly realised some additional candidates were potentially more virulent. The genus of stinging plants that includes the Gympie-Gympie stinger has twenty-seven species and ranges from India into the South Pacific Islands. In Vanuatu, Ni-Vans traditionally use a related stinging plant to punish offenders for minor crimes. I can attest that the Gympie-Gympie stinger can inflict a mildly dangerous sting, but so do their much smaller relations, the stinging nettles. Having spent a lot of time in rainforests, I’ve accidentally blundered into numerous stinging plants, even showing off to travellers by eating their delicious fruit. I can confirm their sting isn’t very painful and lasts only an hour at the most, even when stung on the inside of the mouth. In my opinion, the stinging tree’s reputation is much over-hyped, and I find it hard to credit the stories of horses being driven mad, or people committing suicide due to the pain being so terrible.

If we were to measure plants by the number of deaths they cause, we would have to rank the introduced perennial ryegrass responsible for mass allergic reactions when its pollens pollute the air, at the top of the list. However, many other Australian plant species have toxic saps which can burn, blister, blind and induce violent vomiting episodes.

For all the hype, the fact remains that humans have caused the most deaths to each other.  In Australia, the death rate for homicides has decreased in the past few decades. In the years of 1991/1992, the death rate for homicides was 1.9 per 100,000 people, but just twenty years later, the death rate was almost halved to only 1.1 persons per 100,000 people. The latest figures for 2017 show this has dropped further to 0.8 in Australia, but it’s still a long way from Japan’s intentional homicide rate of 0.2. The reasons for the fall in homicide are varied, but the decrease in the availability of firearms, better policing, and improvements in mental health have helped Australia achieve these results. It seems that it is not only getting safer in the Australian bush, but also in our homes and neighbourhoods.

Does Australia deserve its reputation as a dangerous country where everything will kill you? I don’t think so. Although Australia is home to many unique animals that have developed incredible toxins, I think we can safely assume that Australian animals aren’t extraordinarily dangerous, even compared to our neighbouring countries

 

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