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Why Australian snakes are so venomous

submitted by Aard Vark

(oritteropo)
7 years 10 months 2 weeks ago

YouTube description:

Australia is known as the place with all the deadly animals. Whether they have fur, fins, shells or scales, Australia has them. Snakes are no exception. In fact Australia is known to have loads of venomous snakes. Some of the most venomous on the planet. Think the
Inland Taipan, Brown, Mulga, Death Adder and Tiger Snakes.

So the TNOS team set out to explore just why our snakes are so darn venomous. What we discovered is that it depends on a number of factors including:
* How much food is available;
* The volume of venom the snakes produce;
* Minimising injury to the snake; and
* The potency of the venom.

The Nature of Science website
http://www.thenatureofscience.com.au/

The Nature of Science Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/thenatureofscience

The Nature of Science Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/thenatureofscience

Thanks to James Cook University for their support with this video.
Check out their courses and all around awesomeness at https://www.jcu.edu.au/

5 Comments

MilkmanDan says...

That artificial hand target for strikes looks pretty terrifyingly real in the video.

Made me think they had some psycho volunteering to take a hit and then "test" the antivenom, at least at first.

skinnydaddy1 says...

After years and years of study. They have found that about the only thing in Australia NOT trying to kill you are a couple of the sheep, and the researchers refused to turn their backs to them.

ant

jokingly says...

RIP, mousey.

The "Why" doesn't get addressed until 5:20, and even then it's preceded by "I think it's because..."

The first five minutes are some pretty good filler though.

I read an interesting article on the BBC's web site on exactly this question - http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160404-why-some-animals-have-venoms-so-lethal-they-cannot-use-them

It makes some of the same points as this video, but also has an additional one in regards to why some animals are so toxic to humans: Bad luck! We aren't their targetted prey, so it's pretty much irrelevent to them whether their sting can kill one or 1,000 humans.

Bad luck comes into it as well. A bite from a Sydney funnel-web spider is extremely dangerous for humans, whereas rodents are relatively unaffected by their venom. Since these spiders evolved to eat neither rodents nor humans, this can be seen as nothing more than an unfortunate alignment of the spider's neurotoxin with a receptor on some of our cells.

The "Why" doesn't get addressed until 5:20, and even then it's preceded by "I think it's because..."

The first five minutes are some pretty good filler though.

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