Australia wildlife full of venom
But few deaths are attributed to poisonous killers
Australian wildlife, by popular account, so brims with venom that the average Outback spider could dispatch you with an octuple-eyed glare. The description for the National Geographic show “Australia’s Deadliest Attacks” reads: “Whether it walks, crawls, swims or hops, even the unlikeliest animal could be one of Australia’s killers.”
It is true that strange and potent fauna thrive on the island continent. Biologists consider the box jellyfish, found floating off of Australia’s shores, to be the most toxic marine animal on the planet.
The skin of this jellyfish is studded with cells known as nematocysts that explode to release barbs containing chemicals strong enough to arrest a human heart within minutes.
But such factoids, along with nature shows and headlines about ill-fated animal encounters, promote a particular narrative: That Australia is, as University of Melbourne public health expert Ronelle Welton described the country as “the epicenter of everything venomous.”
In reality, Australian animals are venomous — but they rarely kill, according to research Welton and her colleagues conducted. Their report, to be published in an upcoming issue of Internal Medicine Journal, reviewed hospitalizations and deaths from venomous Australian animals 2000-13.
Based on medical admission data, coroners’ findings and autopsy reports, the scientists determined that venomous bites and stings hospitalized more than 41,000 people over those years — an admission rate of 199 people per 100,000 in the population. Venom killed 64 people during the same time period.
“I was expecting to see larger numbers,” Welton said.
By comparison, the researcher noted there were 5,000 drownings and nearly 1,000 lethal burns in the same time period.
The study described “what is venomous and what is dangerous,” Welton said. “There is, potentially, a very big distinction.”
Allergic reactions to bee and wasp stings — not the insect venom itself — were responsible for a third of the hospital admissions. More than half of the reported deaths also stemmed from anaphylactic shock after an insect bite or sting.
Spider bites caused 30 percent of hospital admissions, but these arachnids killed no one during the time period. The last recorded death from a funnel web spider was in 1980, before the development of antidotes, Welton said.
A red back spider killed an Australian citizen in 1999, but medical responders failed to use antivenom as they did not recognize the spider bite.
Venomous snakes were to blame for 15 percent of admissions in Australia. They caused the most fatalities per hospitalization, with a total of 27 deaths during the time period studied by the report.