To be fair... There are at least... 3... Animals here that aren't explicitly trying to kill us. It's really not that bad.

Just don't go into the warm water or the box jellyfish will get you. Keep an eye out for Sting-rays too... Nobody wants to go out like old-mate Steve.

Oh and don't go into the cold water either, blue-ringed octopus... Nasty buggers.

Rivers too... Not a great idea... Crocks are pretty nippy when they're hungry.

Creeks are pretty safe... Except for those duck-billed, beaver looking mother-fuckers with their poisonous spurs everywhere... (platypus).

Best to avoid the dessert too... Taipan's are pretty nasty. Oh and the fire ants...

Come to think of it, the bush has Tiger Snakes... Probably should avoid that too... Just stay at home...

... Oh... And keep an eye out for the spiders... They really like being indoors where you sleep... Will also kill you...

The main thing to remember though... The true threat... Our sworn enemy for all eternity... Our nations true oppressors... Those fucking Emus.

You missed out the deadly drop-bears

And the Combat-Emu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary

never heard it called a combat emu…

But also, these guys are like… A+ proof of dinosaur’s evolution into birds… you can pretty much picture Cassowaries in place of the raptors in Jurassic park…

Some extra Cassowary info.

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2019...

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/how-da...

"Combat Emu" is my personal contribution to the Aussie lexicon (at least as far as I'm aware). I figured it's appropriate...

luckily, the really deadly cassaworys have not yet learned to swim

And forgotten how to fly

should have thought of that :-)

annecdote: i once went for a job at edinburgh university zoology department (i would have been about 19 at the time), and was confronted with a mostly disected mess.

interviewer: what do you make of that?

me: it looks like a badly disected cassowary.

it was a cassowary (where from, who knows - they don't roam wild on arthur seat) and i didn't get the job (good).

I love Terry Pratchett’s description of XXXX - the Australian analogue in his book “The Last Continent”. While a book on deadly native animals would encompass several volumes, the “book” of safe animals was a single page that listed “some of the sheep.”

Don’t forget the dangerous snails.

https://www.jcu.edu.au/this-is-uni/natural-and-built-environ...

Oh one really important one I forgot to mention... The Eagles that LITERALLY RAIN FIRE FROM THE SKY... https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/australian-birds...

It's often said, but really, the way it's reported in international media is very sensationalist; the things that are deadly are just not common in areas where people live and travel.

Yes, sure, we have some deadly snakes, spiders, crocodiles, a few plants like in the OP, etc. But so do many other countries/regions around the world, including the USA.

In practice, the vast majority of Australians never have any contact with them, and actual cases of people being killed or seriously harmed by these things are extremely rare, and are much less common than fatalities/serious injuries from traffic accidents, which also have quite low rates by international standards.

Australians like to think of themselves as tough, but, I dunno, we're pretty much like most other people around the world in my experience :)

Edit:

Some actual data:

There were 541 animal-related deaths reported to an Australian coroner between 2001 and 2017, with an average of 32 animal-related deaths reported per calendar year. Land mammals comprised the majority (71.0%) of deaths, followed by reptiles and amphibians (10.7%) and insects and invertebrates (8.7%).

...

Nearly one third (31.8%) of animal-related deaths involved horses.

https://www.ncis.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/NCIS-fact...

---

In the same period, nearly 25000 people died in traffic accidents, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

> the things that are deadly are just not common in areas where people live and travel.

Eastern brown snakes and Sydney funnel webs like urban environments. But as you say they don't kill many people even though they can.

The US has bears and mountain lions and shit, which are legitimately pretty dangerous.

That being said, they never lost a war against their wildlife...

Actually, I'd wager that the most dangerous animals in north america are deer and dogs. Deer because they are constantly walking in front of cars and dogs because they're everywhere and bite people. The deer / car encounters can be quite lethal while the dog bite situation is typically not lethal but as with any serious injury can be quite life altering.

Wild boar are apparently pretty scary too. Read about a dad and his kids playing in their yard being suddenly surrounded by thick angry combat pigs (borrowing the cassowary nickname from another post).

…but American dogs are everywhere locked inside peoples homes and mostly trained or bred to be docile. Dogs in America are absolutely not a risk.

America doesn’t have wild dogs. America doesn’t have a biting dog problem. There were 27 dog related deaths last year. Considering how many dogs exist, that’s nothing. People sleep in bed with their dogs, people let their dogs play with infants.

Kudzu has entered the chat.

On the upside, it's edible, not deadly. (Not that Americans seem to eat it.)

At least not deadly to humans. Not sure what impact it's having on, say, other plant species in The South.

I grew up in the south and it's definitely legendary, but my sense is more that it's everywhere but more annoying than devastating. It needs a ton of sunlight which limits it some, but also means it grows along the edges of forests by roads, where it's extremely visible. Gives the impression that it's taking over everything but at least when I still lived there it wasn't. It is certainly out of control though, in the sense of like, we couldn't stop it even if we really wanted to.

I've cleared a couple patches of it a long time ago, it takes persistence but isn't as bad as some other plants in the end. Letting a goat have a go at it a few times a year will end it in a couple seasons.

That sounds about right. I just haven't actually studied the issue.

Florida pythons do not even need a strategy either.

The problem with stats on animal related deaths in Australia is they never count the 80,000 or so a year that die from a massive heart attack when they see a huntsman.

At least the snakes are mostly kind enough to fuck off to where the humans don't live.

It's true that most Aussies live in southern states and have never experienced dangerous animals.

However, people living in north QLD, NT and WA are definitely in nature's territory. Crocodiles are now inhabiting almost every waterway, dry conditions make taipan snakes and spiders a real threat, and the rainforest really does has dangerous plants and animals. As an FNQ resident, most locals no longer swim at the beaches.

I think your perspective depends on where you live.

I wasn’t/am not disputing that, just going on the data that indicates that even in those states, fatalities and severe harms are still relatively rare, compared with other causes. But yes, I fully accept that people living in parts of those states/territories (and others too) need to be more careful. I’ve visited FNQ several times and certainly don’t swim in the sea, at least without nets, or full body protection when snorkeling at the Reef.

Worth pointing out that short of brown bears and wolves, the stuff we have in the US is pretty tame.

Going from memory, feel free to correct: - Tons of snakes that will ruin your day (and probably week/month), but most of them have high survival rates and anti-venom. I was shocked to find they're often survivable without treatment? We're running out of anti-venom for coral snakes (interestingly they're basically cobras), but they're famously docile and have a weak bite.

    - Two dangerous spiders, but both fairly treatable with medical attention. Though brown recluse bites that progress can be pretty scary

    - Alligators are surprisingly non-dangerous, if not fed, or intentionally interacted with. They'll walk right past you, and want nothing to do with people

    - Big cats aren't too common and tend to avoid people; but I guess they've been seeing a few more attacks out west

So it's mostly just bears. Actually, contrary to popular knowledge, black bears kill quite a few people. They can become predatory. Brown bears are obviously scary. I think it's also a myth that you should always play dead... you have to really understand bear behavior to know what to do.

Australia has crocs that seriously hunt people, and fight them over territory. Plus snakes that are super deadly. I guess almost all venomous spiders are less of a big deal than I was lead to believe growing up and usually not fatal, even without medical attention... but you wouldn't want to get bit by a funnel web.

my little nephew went to australia for a year, travelling and working. my poor (late) mother was on the edge of her seat the whole time, convinced that he was going to be bitten, stung, dehydrated etc. we used to (perhaps unforgivably) tease her by showing her david attenborough sort of films featuring box jellyfishes.

Is it any better in the US where corporations, cars, trucks, alligators, wolves, bears, rattlesnakes, and most of all other people all want to kill you?

Rattlesnakes are rarely deadly unless you get bit in a vulnerable part and can't get medical attention. About 10-15 people die a year from rattlesnakes. Bears kill about 50 people a year, cougars rarely kill anyone (something like 27 in 100 years). Gators while terrifying have only killed 26 people in over 70 years.

Cars and humans are far worse.

The thing about Australia's flora and fauna is that Australia has such a low population density. I think that if it matched the US, far more people would die from it's creepy animals etc.

There's a reason why Britain transported its convicts there.