Re:[OT?]Dangerous Alian Wildlife

On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, Alan E Brain wrote:

>
> Beth wrote, re Cane Toads:
>
> > > The truly, truly desperate in search of a high have been
> > > known to boil them up and drink the toxin-laden result. It
contains
> > > hallucinagens as well as a variety of purely ppoisonous alkaloids.
> >
> > Just don't touch/dissect one and absent-mindedly rub your lip....
not being
> > able to feel said lip for 24 hours is no fun!
>
> I suspect that's from personal experience, right?
>
> OK, the header's incomplete. The post is about dangerous Austr-Alian
wildlife.

> Gotta be careful talking about poisonous beasties down here: the Yanks
> will get the impression that everything's venomous. Not true. Neither
> the man-eating 20 ft Great White Sharks nor the 20ft Saltwater crocs
> are poisonous (though some are a LOT bigger than 20 ft - though that's
> big enough). Ok, so the spiders are poisonous, as are the scorpions,
> snakes, jellyfish, seasnails, sea urchins, octopi, toads, even the
> (male) platypus. But not *all* the poisons are fatal. Or at least, not
> always. And you may die from infection from the bite of a goanna or
> parentie, but they're not poisonous either.

*chuckle* I know that when visiting Australia it was very hard not to
get
paranoid when mopuntainbiking across Rottnest island near Perth. I could
see poisonous snake under every bush. The only creature taking offence
was
a startled seagull, of which I graciously took a picture ;)

More startling was the comment that the garden of the house I stayed at
was crawling with Redback spiders - which mere nicely pointed out to me.
But of course they shouldn't be fatal to an adult. Really. Honest.

Cheers,

   Derk