Deadly Oz snake bites tourist's todger A tourist enjoying Australia's Queensland had a close brush with death when a deadly brown snake attacked his todger as he took a roadside toilet break, the The Cairns Post reports. The unnamed victim was last month around 300km northwest of Cairns when he crouched down to relieve himself, at which point the venomous reptile " …
You list a bunch of nasty venomous snakes saying that they were the deadliest in the world. I'm just curious about where the black mamba snake is on your list.
And where's the IT angle on this? Unless the guy was a spammer, then I'd smack the snake and ask how it could have missed?
...of the story of two Australians in the outback, and one of them is bitten in the todger by a poisonous snake. The other one gets on the phone to the Flying Doctor and says "Me mates been bitten by a poisonous snake! What do I do?"
The Flying Doctor says "I can't get there for an hour, and you haven't got that much time. You'll have to suck the poison out of the wound."
The guy says "What?! What if I don't do that?" and the doctor says "If you don't do that, he'll die."
So the bloke returns to his injured pal, who gasps out "What did the doctor say, mate?"
And he says...."Sorry, mate - you're going to die."
Mine's the one with the hat with the corks...
I am a longer term visitor to Australia from a fortunately snake free country (Godzone)
In the time I have been here I have had a reasonable share of encounters with the local snake population. I have to admit this is because I do stuff that no self respecting Aussie would do - such as going into the bush. For the most part Aussies are stay-at-home urban dwellers whose most extreme exposure to the bush is a barbie at the local park.
Given that, I
- Have sat on a dugite - one of the world's 10 most deadly snakes. Both it and I were somewhat discomfited and agreed to disengage forthwith. In my case that was levitation against the laws of physics.
- Have trod or nearly trod on numerous snakes, including death adders and tiger snakes (c.f. world's ten most deadly snakes etc). In one case I demonstrated that hop, skip, jump was totally feasible whilst remaining in mid-air.
- Live right next to the world's biggest concentration of tiger snakes (c.f world's deadliest etc etc) where the local council signs say 'warning snakes in grass'.
Now this may seem somewhat unpleasant, but basically being bitten by a snake in Australia is big news. It very rarely happens. The Aussie snakes are very deadly and do kill people but it is the exception rather than the rule.
Now if you go to India for instance, the cobras are not very deadly but kill a lot of people. This is because people have a lot more likelihood to meet and be bitten by a cobra - rather than Australia where the snakes are deadly but the humans are scant (asides from Godzone immigrants)
The Australian Bush in many locations throughout the country is a relatively safe place to be, sure there can be snakes and there's definitely spiders, but it'd be a rare story to be attacked by one. Many aussies go camping in the bush, and other groups also use the bush for outdoor activities.
What many Aussies don't do however is go to the outback all that often, well the city dwellers don't, and even country folk may not necessarily. The outback breeds its own dwellers, and thats where we manage to get a good number of british backpackers lost :)
But yeah the location of incidents a lot of news items like these come from is the Far North Queensland part of Australia, which has a much higher ratio of dangerous animals than most other locations around the country, with having one of the olds worldest rainforests and harsh terrains too.
What sort of bloke "crouches down" to take a waz? The biggest thing (no pun intended) we have over women and their ooh-la-la multiple orgasms, is the ability to just whip it out and drain the main vein, willy-nilly (so to speak) !
Unless he was crimping off a length, in which case he was lucky he didn't get a funnelweb crawling up his... you get the point.
Snakes are very adept at identifying an unknown creature's eyes (i.e the face, the best place to strike).
This is how snake charming works, the snake isn't entranced by the music, it's the movement of the pipe that keeps it busy, as it believes it to be the eye.
The moral of this story is: If and when you're next in the bush, taking a slash and all of a sudden there's some sort of salient serpent looking inquisitive, then you might want to keep certain elements of your anatomy moving!
because it's very rare for them to miss if you are close enough to get bitten. I'm an Aussie and seen plenty of Browns in my time, and on a hot day they are fast.
Where that guy was is in the tropics so it would have been hot.
For it to only give him a scratch, there mustn't have been much to scratch.
Think about it. The man squats down to relieve himself. Obviously this means a number two, as no self respecting man with squat to Pee.
Now think about it - the snake obviously never approached from the front, otherwise he'd be doing the trouser-round-the-ankles-shuffle that I'm sure we've all done at some point. Therefore, we can only assume that the snake has come from behind. Now, as our victim was executing a number two, one can only imagine how insulted the poor snake would feel to have a lump of turd land on it. Unfortunately for the man, the snake was in the perfect position to exact revenge, which it did.
The only advice we can glean from this - only poo from great heights.
There's another reason so many people die of cobra bites in India: superstition.
A good proportion of cobra bites are venom-free. This isn't well known to the population at large, so they go to the "wise man" for every snake bite, and he's got about a 50-50 chance of applying a placebo to a non-lethal wound and the patient survives. So everyone thinks he's actually doing quite well, and they don't even seek modern antivenoms until it's too late, even though they are surprisingly widely available, so antivenoms only have a 50% success rate too, though if everyone sought immediate help it'd be nearer 90%, but the uneducated rural folk don't really have the skills to actually analyse the numbers and trust their own skewed empiricism, reinforced by swamic mysticism over state information.
Perhaps the poor man was saved by a well-timed crimp-off landing on the snake's head, thus causing its strike to be deflected, and resulting in the man only getting a harmless scratch instead of a lethal bite?
Perhaps the magical factor-x ingredient within the chocolate log had a powerfully strong repellent effect, which the snake was no match for?
So many possibilities, and sadly we may never know the real reason for his lucky escape...
...that the list doesn't include our perrenial favorite--the cottonmouth, or water moccasin as it's usually reffered as--it bites more frequently than rattlers along the Eastern Starboard US. Not fun--pygmy timber rattlers may be a scad more deadlier toxin-wise, but they're more wilder than their long black kin.
Now, if you want exotic and even more poisonous, try hunting up a coral snake--they look a fair deal like non-poisonous kingsnake, right down to the head and fangs...
Used to be one of the world's deadliest, but fame and Hollywood did their usual and it's fallen off the list of the "world's sexiest/deadliest" recently. Alcohol, drug-fuelled parties, a failed romance with Naomi Campbell, all these and more mean the once lauded black mamba is now auditioning for a minor role in the next Paris Hilton video, while both Tarantino and Uma Thurman refuse to take its calls.
Each continent seems to boast the most poisonous snake. Which kills you deader?
Having grown up in mamba country, I reckon too many years with the dole have made the Aussies soft and even a grass snake could kill them.
Still, I did know a bloke in South Africa that got bitten on the leg by a black mamba. Within 5 minutes he was feeling very poorly and had blurred vision. Although this was at a small holiday settlement far from any hospital, the next door neighbour was a doctor and kept him alive. He spent a few weeks in hospital but survived. They reckon the mamba must have recently had a kill and thus only had a small amount of poison on board when it bit him.
Personally, I think I'd prefer to be bitten on the todger by a neurotoxic snake. You then live or die. If you get bitten by a cytotoxic snake (eg. puff adder) then even if you live, bits drop off.
But that's easy for me to say, now living in snake free NZ.
I'm an Ozzie and let's face it - none of the Australian wildlife is either cute or cuddly. The Koalas they hand you to hold in the petting zoos don't count - they've cleaned them, deodorised them and made sure they've had their bowel movements before the public gets there.
Your average Ozzie wildlife is an ornery creature who wants to be left alone - but which has developed various methods to discourage you in case you decide to press the point. Unlike the previously-mentions Black Mamba (which has been known to hunt down a human or two when it's pissed), Australian animals would much rather scare you and leave you alone.
Which does not mean that there no animal-related deaths in Oz. Between the Funnel-web spiders down south, the red-backs up here, the various poisoned snakes, fish and sharks, SOMEONE will eventually get on the short end of the (stati)stick. Even if only from pure dumb-ass bad luck (stay away from the Dingos, though - Hyenas without the shyness, the lot of them).
I have no problems walking the bush over here, safe in the knowledge that unless I do something stupid ("oh look honey, the big red male 'roo is stretching and scratching its stomach at us. Imitate him so I can get a photo") both the animal and I will want to simply back off and go our separate way.
Not only do we have between 7 and 10 of the top 10 worlds deadliest snakes (depending on ranking system), we also have two of the 3 worlds most toxic creatures - the box jellyfish and the blue-ringed octopus. The third is either the cone shell or Ms. Spears (still up for debate).
Add sharks, crocs, spiders, other snakes, and a variety of other bits and pieces, what's not to like?
Mine's the platypus skin coat, thanks. And watch out for the spurs...
"Dave", you wasted the Paris icon.
You should of signed off as "Millsy".
@Jerry
"Godzone" is what you Kiwis call you cold, raining, miserable, earth-quake prone island?
How ironic.
Also I know why you spend all your time in the bush. More chance of you finding a girl friend in a paddock than a pub. (Baaaa)
Where I used to live in West Africa, blokes all squat when taking a piss outside. Don't know why but they do. Killed a cobra out there cos the kids at the school were chasing it. You're allowed to kill any snake except a python, cos that's bad luck, so some itty bitty litle snake gets it but a 3-4m long mahoosive one gets a by, don't make sense.
As I'm a Cairns resident, snakes are the least of your worries here.
Over the course of the last 4 years, I've come across a black snake, (what we believed was a) taipan in a barn and a tiger snake alone in semi rural areas.
Even in some of the more populated areas you can see crocodiles in the creeks who could come up to the road side if they wanted to. That includes creeks that run underneath the main highway, seen a nice 3m specimen driving along one day looking down into a creek...
One of the more popular tourist beaches near where I live has a creek that feeds out to the ocean from the rear of a resort which is know to have a pair of 5m and 2.5m crocodiles in it; that being said, I can testify that it does yield good Barramundi and Mangrove Jacks though :-)
Every year one of the crocs comes out onto the beach (during wet season) and makes local headlines. Bottom line is that living or visiting here in FNQ, you need to have your wits about you, apply common sense and you won't have any problems.
I am intrigued as to why the guy was squatting to take a pee though; the outcome might be God's way of saying he should be standing up to pee, perhaps he's a poor bugger whose been nagged into submission?
"If your hardware is infested with venomous Oz snakes, do not crouch on top of it to relieve yourself in an effort to induce BOFH-oid corrosion of the motherboards in undesired machines."
See? Now wasn't that easy?
Why is there no trouser snake icon? Guess Paris will have to do as having been near the things with some frequency, she's the closest we've got.
According to Australian wildlife websites, the toxicity of snakes is based on the time it takes for their venom to kill a mouse. Unless trodden on or pee-ed upon, Oz snakes are timid creatures and invariably get out of your way. After thrashing about in the bush on many occasions, I have yet to encounter a snake, deadly or otherwise. I have collected several leeches, which in turn have collected my blood. Advice from those running camping and trekking sites - make a noise when you move through the bush and you will rarely if ever encounter a snake, even where they are numerous.
I come from near Cairns, where the Tiapan was originally identified. What's an inland Tiapan? I know that the the Western Brown is the most deadliest in the world. A Tiapen can produce enough venom to kill a hundred people, but I think it is more like 30-40 normally. There is a documentary around where a guy in nearby Mareeba milks the most angry snake (Tiapan)I have ever even heard of, and just after he finishes telling them that those snakes can produce enough venom to kill 30 or 40 people, the snake drops in what looks like enough to kill a hundred. Same documentary has a six year old child that a scrub/carpet snake tried to eat. The record carpet snake In Australia was in my local neighbour hood.
Most of the most deadliest snakes in the world are local.
Rodger doger, and here's a big fat Aussie Trouser Snake to you, Register.
Wayne.
Forgot to mention. Brown and Tiapans are aggressive, Tiapans the most. During mating they will defend d territory, and you can drop within 20 meters of being bitten, and they can travel at fast running pace. Cycle riders have had snakes chase them down the road and struggled to get away from them (probably hilly).
Death adders just sit there waiting for you to step on them, they don't get out of the way, and are hard even for trained trackers to see. They attract prey by wagging their tale like a worm One brushed my ankle, and I looked behind me and it was only the eyes that gave him away. I went away and came back again to the exact spot, and took a while to find him, he just looked like one of the sparse mango leaves or sticks on the green brass. Very well camouflaged.
It is not so dangerous, many snakes get out of the way, and you can always stay out of tall grass and bush.
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