This is the moment one of Australia's deadliest creatures found itself at the mercy of yet another of the nation's venomous killers.
A Victorian farmer was astonished to find an enormous red-back spider had lifted an eastern brown snake off the ground and 'hurled it' into its web under one of the family's car at the weekend.
'It's just mindboggling,' said Neale Postlethwaite, a farmer of 20 years from Gooroc, north of Melbourne.
'I can't believe it was actually able to stop it and then hurl it up backwards into its nest.'
The eastern brown snake is known for its potent venom, which can cause sudden death, neurotoxity, coagulation disturbances and nephrotoxicity, according to researchers. Eastern brown snakes - such as the one pictured - contain enough venom to kill 20 adults with a single bite. Redback spiders are found throughout the country and there more than 250 red-back bites each year which require the use of anti-venom, according to the Australian Museum.
gob. YIKES!
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:40 am
by RayThom
Now THAT'S a spider. Imagine driving down the road and this thing comes ballooning onto your face.
Are there any creatures in Oz, other than the koala, that can't kill a human being?
Australia... it ain't for sissies.
Re: Australia hates you.
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:43 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
I think "hurl" should be read as "haul" throughout. The only hurling going on there was me being sick at the thought of both the spider and the snake going about their business below/in what looks like the undercarriage of a vehicle.
Re: Australia hates you.
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:00 pm
by Sue U
I've quoted this before:
"[Australia] has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.”
― Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (a book from which I learned mostly all that I know of Australia).
Re: Australia hates you.
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 7:27 pm
by Scooter
Well, the prisons of the world were emptied to populate it, seems only fair that Mother Nature gave the animals a fighting chance.
