People love talking about Australia as this beautiful, sun-kissed, girt-by-sea country where everything wants to kill you. Often that reputation is not entirely undeserved: the single most dangerous sharks, birds, and jellyfish on the planet all call Australia home. But when it comes to snakes, one of the nation’s more notorious predators, the danger factor might be somewhat overblown, The Guardian reports.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) wants to debunk the myth that Australia is home to the world’s deadliest snake species—arguing that the risk of being bitten in the first place, as well as ultimately dying from a snake bite, is far greater throughout the continents of Asia, Africa, and South America.
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Ruchira Somaweera, a CSIRO herpetologist (someone who studies amphibians and reptiles), speculates that the popular belief is likely rooted in a study from several decades ago which found that Australian snakes such as king browns had relatively high levels of toxicity. There’s also this paper from 1979 that claims 21 of the 25 most toxic snakes in the world are all from Australia. In terms of lab-tested lethality that may be true. The problem, though, is that these kinds of studies fail to properly weigh up a range of other factors that intrinsically play into the actual, real world “danger” of snakes.
“If you look at the amount of people who actually die [in Australia] from snakes each year, it’s practically nothing, the encounter rates are so low in comparison to other parts of the world.” said Ruchira. “Factors such as the quality of antivenom, our paramedical services, and knowledge of first aid is really good here in Australia, which contributes to the negligible number of human deaths.”
Ruchira points to parts of Asia, Africa, and South America by way of comparison, where it’s relatively common to have a run-in with large aggressive snakes such as vipers—particularly in agricultural areas where people haven’t been properly educated on appropriate footwear and first aid training. About 10,000 people in India die from snake bites every year, he says, while “in the neighbouring island of Sri Lanka, an estimated 80,000 people get bitten by snakes annually, of which about 400 lose their lives.
“It’s clearly a massive issue and a real threat in other parts of the world, especially Asia, compared to Australia.”
There are about 3,000 snake bites in Australia each year, resulting in about 500 hospital admissions and, on average, two deaths, according to the University of Sydney. About half of those deaths are due to brown snake bites; but while deaths sometimes occur soon after the bite, it’s uncommon to die hours later because of the availability of antivenom in Australia.
Scientists have since revised the concept of dangerous snakes in Australia, ranking them according to the actual threat they pose to human lives in the hope of making their “danger” factor more relevant. On that model, species such as brown snakes and tiger snakes—aggressive species that are fairly common in urban areas—top the list.
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