no, i haev no idea why i thought this was a good idea

Currently reading Top Ten Most Venomous Snakes, where in an unsurprising turn of events, Australia holds five slots including one and two. Because Australia.

(Africa wins as Most Terrifying Snake I Have Ever Obsessively Read About My God Twenty Minutes????? WTF Evolution WHY?)

My only real comfort here is that, should I be near one of these snakes at any time, I don't have to worry about dying within twenty minutes or less (thanks, Black Mamba!); I will have a heart attack right there and die. So you know, there's that.

Comments

[synecdochic]

what gets me is how the pic of the Black Mamba is of a person holding it.

i mean, really.

[seperis]

One of the wikipedia links? IS ABOUT BREEDING THEM.

....seriously?

[synecdochic]

.....

some people have entirely too much time on their hands. AND NO SENSE OF SELF PRESERVATION. AT ALL.

[seperis]

SO MUCH THIS.

[out_there]

I assumed the picture was related to someone milking them for venom. I know with some of the Australian snakes, to develop the antivenins you actually need someone to handle the snakes and milk them for fresh venom samples.

Like this.

[nagasvoice]

I'm trying to remember the name of the guy in Florida who was famous for getting bitten quite a lot (and apparently this had some odd results on his immune system and on improving his arthritis, oddly enough) and repeatedly surviving the really deadly ones. He milked them to make antivenin and was famous for flying in with emergency supplies done on short notice. Venoms are complex, so no surprise most of them have to be made with the real thing, not many artificial substitutes out there.

[synecdochic]

i mean, they're PRETTY and all. but OH GOD WHY

[seperis]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/snakes-in-a-frame-mark-laitas-stunning-photographs-of-slithering-beasts-27577991/?no-ist <--this is gorgeous colors on snakes, btw.

[synecdochic]

oh wow, those are gorgeous!

[grammarwoman]

Holy crapballs, king cobras can get to be 18 feet long???

The snakes in that article are beautiful - I'm glad to look at them from the safety of my chair.

[venetia_sassy]

Only five? Huh, thought we'd have more than that.

[seperis]

I, too, was shocked, but Australia shouldn't hog all the glory, okay? Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Asia are plenty dangerous. And the US has the rattler, which is tenth on the list and like the poor cousin who got invited for continental representation purposes. Which just saying, rattlers are scary, even if they're no Black Mamba.

[crabby_lioness]

Eh, we have two of them in our backyard, the rattler and it's silent and more irritable cousin the water moccasin. Which is okay as long as they stay in the backyard. Finding a moccasin on my bathroom counter one morning right after I got out of bed was not okay. I got a quick lesson in the importance of keeping an uncluttered house.

[seperis]

When I lived rural, we had rattlers (lots), water moccasins (many), and the occasional copperhead. Water moccasins didn't bother me since they rarely came anywhere near the house, but one day while walking over a county road bridge about a quarter mile from the house, I looked down and saw a breeding ball of 'em. I can honestly state that nothing in my life terrified me quite like seeing that.

...never getting over it.

[(Anonymous)]

I once lived in PA, where there are several poisonous snakes - the water moccasion, the copperhead, the rattler and the coral snake.

I had the day of, no, really snakes are TRYING to kill us, once when I was a teenager. We went for a walk in the woods along a creek. We ended up entering the creek when we heard the sound of a rattler on the path ahead but could not see it - it was upset, and we ceded the path to it. We had walked about half a mile in the creek (it was shallow and we were kids it was fun), when we noticed several black snakes ahead. Not a big deal until we saw one of them swimming towards us with it's mouth open, fangs and white clearly showing. We practically levitated out of the creek. So, we decided to head back, and the boy I was walking with was turned around, talking to me about how "lucky" we were to encounter both snakes, when I had to grab his arm to keep him from continuing backwards - because there was a copperhead coiled up on the path a few feet back, his head up and alert, tongue out "watching" us. You can tell a copperhead by the shape of it's head. It's not fun to see.

So, back into the water, hoping we were far enough from the previous encounter - and low and behold, he feels something brush up against his leg, looks down, and there are the stripes on the snake swimming by. Another levitation out of the creek, and we walked home on the side of the bank.

It might have been a King snake, we didn't stay to find out.

This became why I did't walk along the creek on a hot summer day ever again. Seriously, the snakes could have it.

[seperis]

Holy shit you win forever and ever amen. *shudders*

...seriously, what snake god did you piss off that day?

[ratcreature]

Probably Australia was just never meant to be inhabited by people, as if the fauna got displaced from some hell world, like Salusa Secudundus or such. I'm glad I live in Europe without such deadly critters. These really make you wonder what they evolved to eat if one bite can kill that many animals. It seems literally like overkill to be that toxic.

[seperis]

These really make you wonder what they evolved to eat if one bite can kill that many animals. It seems literally like overkill to be that toxic.

...holy shit, there's something worse in Australia that hasn't tried to kill us yet?

[jamafanta]

I know a guy working in Africa. He described getting into his truck and accidentally disturbing the mamba on his windshield, which whipped around and tried to get in his side window (luckily rolled up because HOT and air conditioning) in order to retaliate. They're apparently not just chase-you-in-your-car fast, they're also smart and assholes.

[seperis]

Oh my God. OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO SEE THIS IN MY DREAMS.

[lilacsigil]

I'm Australian, but my dad grew up in Africa. No wonder he's so chill about snakes here!

[out_there]

Because Australia.

It's kind of twisted that I do get a weird flush of national pride from that.

[seperis]

Dude, own the pride. Your country owns fifty percent of the ten most dangerous snakes in the world.

This needs to be on a t-shirt.

[out_there]

Somewhere, there probably is a t-shirt with that on it.

(And I find it mildly amusing that despite all of our super scary snakes, I'm a 33 y.o. who's never seen a snake in the wild. We might have them, but it's not like they're waiting around every corner.

...either that, or Mum teaching us to thump our feet when walking through bush to give the snakes ample warning to avoid us really does work. *shrugs*)

[lilacsigil]

Australian snakes don't *want* to bite you! They're shy and retiring, unlike cobras. The inland taipan (#1 on the list) lives out in the desert with no people around. Okay, two of the five (tiger snake and eastern brown snake) do live around my house but it's extremely unusual for anyone to get bitten.

[seperis]

That's what they tell you, sure. Then the venom of one thousand dead men happens and it's all convulsions and necrotic tissue. Seriously, this is bothering me now thanks to ratcreature--if this is evolution in progress among the animals of Australia, what were they defending against that needs these kinds of weapons?

Answer: It hasn't been found yet!

Eldritch god, y/n?

[lilacsigil]

Well, we used to have megafauna but people and climate change wiped them out between 60-35,000 years ago, depending on the region. BUT MAYBE IT WAS THE SNAKES?

[pudacat]

THIS is why people believe in God. Or the Devil. This much scary and evil HAS to be by design. If it's just random, why aren't humans like this?

Oh, wait,we are. We just come up with reasons/excuses for our evil. Carry on, Listverse, carry on. It's "nice" reading about how animals who are as scary as humans are better.

My argument about creation was always based on the fact that if Eve was real she'd have run praying and screaming when a snake talked to her.