Poisonous snakes, toads, and insects I can deal with. I know that dingos, water buffalo, and crocodiles have attitude problems. There is no doubt at all that Great White sharks are not your friend.
But getting mauled by a wombat is really too much. Next I expect to find out that the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, was actually from Canberra. 😉
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Established: 21 November 2004
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Well what can you expect when the only non-dangerous animals are some of the sheep
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*Some of the sheep* is right. 😉 Ask any Welshman, Kiwi or Aussie sheep farmer why they paint a red ‘X’ on the back of the sheep that don’t kick! 😈 LMAO
Aha, Bryan. 😛 We saw this on the evening news. I warned in a post a while ago about how dangerous Wombat’s can be, and that they are not the cute fat cuddly animal most tourists seem to think they are. However, it’s the first time I ever heard of one trying to bite a guy’s leg off or claw him to death. They are not built for it. Very weird. Normally, if you are stupid enough to sufficiently p*ss one off… they will ram your legs at a high speed (and usually break them), and then ram your head and it’s all over. They have a very hard bony head plate and can sprint a short distance at over 40 KM/H.
As for Sharks, we have the 10 deadliest here and bu far the deadliest (in terms of human casualties, higher than all the other shark species combines) is the Sandtiger Shark (or grey nurse shark), though it’s been hunted to near extinction and is now a protected species. The bull shark is very deadly and is unusual in that it can swim in either salt or fresh water.
We have an amazing variety of fauna here that is unique to Australia and consists of a huge variety of strange and unique animals; some 83% of mammals, 89% of reptiles, 90% of fish and insects and 93% of amphibians that inhabit the continent are unique and endemic to Aus. 🙂
Fauna of Australia
We have dragons too, like the Weedy Seadragon or Common Seadragon. 🙂 They are one of the few species where the male carries and incubates the fertilized eggs until they hatch.
I think he’s a cute little fella (and colourful)! 😀
I was curious to see that only 3 aquarium’s have them, and two are in the USA, one in CA and (I thought rather strangely) in Tennessee (the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, Tennessee to be precise)! The third aquarium is here in Vic. 🙂
We also have the Leafy Sea Dragon Festival! 😆
There ya go! 😉 😀
There are stories about sheepherders….
While most people who get bitten in the Gulf are bitten by bull sharks, it is usually their own fault by swimming among the bait fish. When the bull sharks attack the bait fish they just swim with their mouths open and bite whatever they make contact with. They tend to spit out humans as being inedible.
I’ve swum with both bulls and grey nurse sharks without problems, so it must be different conditions. There was plenty to eat when I spent a lot of time in the water, and I wasn’t doing anything stupid, like spearing fish.
A big difference between Oz and the Gulf Coast is that our dangerous animals try to avoid people, while the Aussie varieties seem to have it in for people. The very pretty coral snake is a cobra, but you have to be incredibly stupid to get bitten, as in picking it up and handling it.
Only the Cotton-mouth is aggressive, among our poisonous snakes, and you learn to avoid them. The rest of them will leave if you give them a chance, because they use their venom to eat, and humans are too big for the menu.
The ‘gators only become a problem if some idiot feeds them and they start identifying people with lunch.
In Australia it would seem that humans got put on the menu a while ago,
dont’ forget those poisonous duckbill platypuses….
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It’s just a poison spur on the back feet, which shouldn’t be a problem for anyone whose intentions are pure.
b-b-b-but… wombats make cube-shaped poo, which in turn makes absolutely delightful paper!
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All this talk of dangerous animals makes me feel pretty safe here in Chicago. I live within walking distance of a wooded area, but most of those animals leave us alone. Even the raccoons don’t attack, they just wait until you leave and then knock over the garbage cans. The deer run away. No crocs or snakes and rarely a poisonous spider. Just a lot of sneaky bunnies and annoying squirrels.
More than a few people here are afraid of coyotes though. One town is freaking out because the coyotes figured out that teeny tiny little unattended doggies make a nice snack and started eating them. So now they want to shoot all the coyotes to make them go away. I have never heard of a coyote attacking a person. But hey, people around here want their animals in the zoo not their yards.
.-= last blog ..Chicago River Geese =-.
Cubed poo has to hurt and it gives a whole new meaning to toilet paper.
Well, we have seen some coyotes you have apparently been following Interstate 10. Lady Min. They are considered a non-native nuisance species, and a threat to domestic animals, but no one does much about them, Cats and small dogs have more than enough to worry about from the raptors in the area, so it is a tough life for outdoor pets.
Raccoons are a problem for people who store there dry animal food outside, as the ‘coons can get into most containers that aren’t padlocked. The real lesson should be: don’t step on mangy wombats.
Sorry for the sporadic comments… I’ve been fighting a windoze virus thanks to me stupidly allowing an automated MS update. Luckily, it’s an old one (around 2001) and so is well known and easily dealt with by most AV s/w. Unfortunately, it’s amazingly invasive and has infected every executable on my Dev system (including executable’s like screen-savers (.scn) etc). This system has about 2 TB of almost full diskspace. It took about 40 hours just to disinfect one partition of about 560GB. It’s called ‘Win32.Parite.B’ All up, it’s taken about 3 full days to get rid of it, and I still have to spend at least a full day installing Windoze and all my tools and app’s, probably two days! So, it’s cost me a week. Not HAPPY!!! 👿
I’ve sent a VERY p*ssed off eMail to M$ because they have Windoze Update designed to automatically tell your F/W & A/V that it’s totally safe and to ignore it. I know it won’t do me any good, but it felt good to tell them what I thought of them all etc. 😈 I even said I may seek compensation as they have breached almost every decent security guideline in the World. I may spend some time seeing if they have actually breached the law here. Wouldn’t be the first time! On top of that, I have an infection of my own and just finished Antibiotics. *shrug*
/rant
Anyway… back on topic… 😉
Jill, you are right about the Platypus (the male only has a hind spur), and the toxin is very deadly. But they are very shy creatures, and fast. 🙂 I think only two poeple in history have been ever poisoned. 🙂
Interestingly, the number of shark attacks around Aus coincides with a decrease in fish populations (serious overfishing going on). I think it’s kinda poetic justice actually. We take their food supply, so we become part of their diet. Seems eminently fair to me. 🙂
BTW… I’m running windoze XP & Firefox off one of my portable USB key drives, until the workstation is clean again, and I reinstall Windoze (which I’ve been wanting to do anyway). I set it up ages ago as a diagnostic, portable system I can carry with me, luckily! And I keep it up to date reasonable, the AV (Dr.Web) was just updated just a few weeks ago. I use a portable suite called ‘Lupo PenSuite’ (with several additions of my own). 🙂