In defence of Australian Animals

A typical fierce Australian animal, ready to hurl itself at an unsuspecting victim.

I don't think Terry Pratchett started the myth that the Australian continent is packed with deadly creatures, but he must surely share some of the blame for popularising this idea.

Death held out a hand, I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS—

Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.

After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.

Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them to allow his master to clamber free.

HMM . . . Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA, he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE.

He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?

They waited.

IT WOULD APPEAR THAT—

'No, wait, master. Here it comes.'

Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper. He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.

'May I?' said Albert. Death handed him the paper.

' "Some of the sheep," ' Albert read aloud.

From Discworld 22 - The Last Continent [Terry Pratchett, 1998].

Australians promote this fiction probably because it implies they are a hardy breed of Crocodile Dundees, contemptuously shrugging off fearsome beasts daily. In actual fact, Australians are by and large a bunch of spoilt wimps* liable to run away in fear from a tiny sugar glider.

[* = I exclude from this criticism Aboriginal people living in the Top End who share swimming holes with salt-water crocodiles.]

Let us have a look at what the continent has to offer.

Consider Dorothy's fearful exclamation in the Wizard of (ironically) OZ; "Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh My!".

Australia has no lions or tigers or bears - or even any other large carnivores that are in any way comparable.

Every other continent, with the exception of Antarctica (and even that has leopard seals), has more in the way of large carnivores. In addition to the lions and tigers and bears, other continents also have cheetahs, leopards, jaguars, mountain-lions, wolves, hyenas and so on; a whole assortment of large and dangerous meat-eaters you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night.. Even an animal like a baboon could make a mess of someone. There are also megafauna; elephants, rhinos, hippos and so forth, which, although vegetarian, are quite willing and able to kill a person.

By contrast, Australia has only one single animal in this category; the salt water crocodile. They don't even grow as big as Nile crocodiles and they mostly inhabit remote places where comparatively few people go. A bear is smart and can actively hunt a person, whereas a crocodile has a brain that would easily fit into a matchbox and is a creature of instinct. Getting chomped by a crocodile is like falling into a hole in the ground or walking onto a road and getting hit by a truck; it's largely your own fault for incautiously going somewhere you shouldn't be.

There are dingos. Dingos are just dogs, and smaller and less dangerous than many domestic breeds. A starving dingo may under exceptional circumstances take an unprotected baby, but a rottweiler can easily kill an adult human. And there's no rabies here to worry about either.

We're even under-represented when it comes to small carnivores. What do we have to match a honey badger or a wolverine, or even a ferret? At best we have a Quoll; less dangerous than a cat and teetering on the edge of extinction.

Tasmanian devils sound fierce enough (both in terms of the name and the actual sound they make), but are primarily scavengers that these days mostly eat road-kill. I suppose one could give you a good biting if you tried to pick it up, but so could a poodle.

Supposedly a Cassowary can kill you. Total death toll by cassowary: one 14 year-old boy who was trying to club the bird to death and got kicked in the neck for his troubles, severing a carotid artery. I'm not sure it's fair to brand the bird a killer when it was acting in self-defence.

An emu can peck and scratch, but is smaller and less aggressive than an African ostrich. Ostriches kill many people a year in Africa.

Obviously you can still be bitten by a wombat or a koala and even a sugar glider can draw blood, but it's stretching it to say that they are in any way dangerous.

What about the nasty, toxic, creepy-crawlies?

Native wasps are less dangerous than the European wasp and pale in comparison to monsters like the Japanese Giant Hornet.

Native bees don't even have stings and are harmless. Other places have to contend with Africanized "killer" bees.

We have large bull-ants which can hurt when they bite, but nothing like army ants that attack in the millions and can strip you to a skeleton.

Native scorpions are small and only weakly venomous. Only one person has ever died from the sting of an Australian scorpion, and that was a baby who was only assumed to have been stung - no scorpion was actually found.

No native amphibians are noticeably toxic. There's the introduced cane toad, which I'm not sure should really count, but that's only a threat to native animals and in no way dangerous to humans (unless you literally milk the venom and eat it). We don't have specimens as toxic as the poison dart frog, nor can we boast a creature like the Horror Frog, which breaks the bones in its feet to form claws for defence.

What about Snakes? Surely we've got a lot of venomous snakes!

In terms of venom toxicity, Australian snakes are indeed considered to be the most toxic in the world. I think this is to a degree an artifact of the testing process. Snake venom toxicity is determined by testing on rats and mice. Most Australian snakes prey on small mammals like rats and mice, and it would make sense that their venom is more toxic to creatures of this type.

But whatever the truth, being more toxic does not make them more dangerous. After all, botulism toxin (botox) is the most toxic chemical known, but people happily inject it into their faces.

Consider the "number one most venomous snake in the world", the Inland Taipan: Yes its venom is 50 times (or whatever the figure is) as powerful as that of a cobra, but this snake has never killed a single person.

Australia has between 2 and 4 snake bite deaths per year. This is less than any other continent (barring, as usual, Antarctica), and pales into insignificance against India where over 10,000 people die from snake-bite per year.

There are pythons. They can grow fairly big and occasionally someone's chihuahua gets eaten. I suppose a really big one might be a threat to a child. However, we don't have the big reticulated pythons of Southeast Asia or the anacondas of South America that can eat an adult human. Total human fatalities by python in Australia: zero.

Yes, there was the YouTube video a couple of years back of a python eating a crocodile near Mt Isa. What wasn't obvious was that it was only a 1 m fresh-water crocodile, and even then the snake took several hours to subdue it. Hardly a battle of the titans.

Other reptiles? A thorny devil looks a little scary, but is totally harmless (although I suppose it might hurt if you stepped on one with bare feet). By contrast, the equivalent American creature, the Horned Toad can squirt blood at you from its eyes.

A big goanna can hurt if it bites, but is nothing compared with the Indonesian Komodo Dragon, which weighs as much as a person and eats goats.

[BTW, that's enough with the links; you can type names into Wikipedia as easily as I can.]

Spiders?

Australia is supposedly overrun with huge, deadly spiders, but this too is a myth.

The largest (by weight) spider in the world is the Goliath Bird-Eating spider. This is a South American spider.

The largest (by size) is the Giant Huntsman, which comes from Laos.

The most deadly is the Brazilian Wandering Spider, which, naturally enough, comes from Brazil.

None of these are found in Australia.

Of the ten largest species of spiders, only one or arguably two, is found in Australia. There is the Golden Orb Weaver - one of the least scary looking spiders - and (arguably) the Huntsman. I believe that top-ten lists which include the Huntsman are in fact referring to the Giant Huntsman, and not the comparatively smaller species which live in Australia.

In terms of scariness, I suppose it's more subjective, but you'd be hard pressed to beat the Camel Spider (do a Google Image search if you dare). These abominations are found on every continent except Australia and (yet again) Antarctica.

Of the ten most dangerous species of spider, only two are found in Australia.

There's the redback; it's the same thing as the American Black Widow, and there is also an equivalent species found in Europe (the Mediterranean black widow), so it's not unique to Australia. It's a shy and retiring creature and only weakly poisonous. Most people bitten don't even require treatment. How many people have been killed by a redback? They say no one has died since an anti-venom was developed in the 1950s, but I have been unable to find any evidence of deaths even prior to that date.

Then there's the Funnelweb. It certainly looks scary and it's more toxic than the redback, yet the chance of death from even an untreated bite is estimated at much less than 1%. Note the word "estimated"; in reality no one has died from a bite in so long that it's difficult to determine.

Sea Creatures?

Certainly there are plenty of dangerous animals in the ocean, but none of these are unique to Australia. Box jellyfish, stone fish, sea snakes, stingrays etc. are found right through the tropics. Blue-ringed octopuses are found as far away as Japan. Everywhere that has coastline has sharks.

Anything else?

Do we have anything like a piranha? Nothing close, not even a Snapping Turtle.

Vampire bat? Nope.

Electric eel? No way.

There's the platypus, the male of which has venomous spurs on his hind legs. The venom appears to be formulated to cause pain to an attacker rather than kill prey, and is not considered to be lethal to humans. Most Australians have probably not even seen a platypus outside of a zoo, so getting spiked by a platypus is hardly a common hazard.

A kangaroo can kick you. Some kangaroos are very large and they obviously have very strong legs, so a kick could no-doubt injure a person, but your average farm animal can do much worse. A good kick in the head from a horse can easily kill a person, and I believe horses cause more fatalities per year in Australia than any other animal.

In conclusion:

• There are whole categories of deadly animal which are not found in Australia.

• For every deadly animal that is found in Australia, there's something at least as bad, and usually much worse, elsewhere in the world.

• The number of deaths by (non-human) animal in Australia are extremely low compared to most other countries.

• Most Australians go years at a time without even seeing a dangerous native animal.

This "everything'll kill ya, mate" business is a great big lie.