Watch out, it's snake-bite season

“Mid-summer is snake-bite season and Sydney vets are treating more pets than usual for brown and black snake bites,” reads the article in the latest issue of The Mosman Daily. “The snakes are biting in suburban areas too, not just in neighbourhoods near bushland. Dozens of cats and dogs are being treated each week but not all vets in Sydney carry antivenom.”

Lovely.

Australia, as we all know, is filled with all sorts of venomous creatures. Even the platypus (!) is venomous (the male has venomous spurs on his hind legs). Despite the ghoulish fascination of the sea wasp, the blue-ringed octopus and the Sydney funnel-web spider, it’s the snakes that seem to cause the most trouble. In Australia, people even get bitten while attending the races.

And if you do get bitten, it’s likely to be life-threatening.

Rankings of the world’s most venomous snakes vary considerably, but most of them acknowledge that Australia leads the rankings, and by some way. This list, from the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne, is based on what appears to be the most scientific definition, the LD50 (defined as the amount of venom required to kill 50% of a given sample of injected mice).

If you live in Australia, it makes for sobering reading. Of the world’s 25 most venomous snakes, an astonishing 20 are Australian, including the top 11 deadliest. Not a single African snake makes the grade, not even the Boomslang (which cracks the top 10 on many other lists).

Here’s the list:
1. Inland taipan
2. Eastern brown snake
3. Coastal taipan
4. Tiger snake
5. Black tiger snake
6. Beaked sea snake
7. Black tiger snake (Chappell Island subspecies)
8. Death adder
9. Spotted brown snake
10. Gwarder
11. Australian copperhead

If you’re visiting Sydney and you’re interested, you can see some of them here.

What’s striking — no pun intended — is how the names of some these snakes generally do little to communicate just how deadly they are. Both taipan species sound dangerous, as does the tiger snake (though tiger snakes elsewhere in the world, including South Africa, are harmless). But “brown snake” and “black snake” do little to convey how dangerous they are. In fact, they sound positively dull. (“Death adder” is much more impressive.)

Melbourne has a much bigger snake problem than Sydney; I remember watching an Animal Planet documentary on a snake catcher who extricated unbelievably deadly serpents from people’s living rooms. Imagine finding a black mamba in your lounge, and it may give you an idea of the gravity of the situation.

I find snakes fascinating — generally in theory rather than an actual encounter, though. On my most recent trip to the bush, I was thrilled to see a Mozambique Spitting Cobra crossing the road (yes, it wanted to get to the other side). Granted, I was safely ensconced in an air-conditioned car at the time.

Our game guard told us one morning that he’d just seen a black mamba, and the snake had raised itself above the bonnet of the Land Rover he was driving. Fortunately the snake — like most — decided that discretion was the better part of valour; large mambas are very common in that part of the world. Last year, while out driving on my own, I saw one that must have been at least 3m, probably more, draped in the branches of a bush like tinsel. The moment it felt the vibrations from the vehicle, it beat a hasty retreat. A black mamba at full speed is one of Africa’s more impressive sights.

There’s a reasonable amount of bushland in the area where I live. I hope that my encounters with Australian snakes will be limited to the ones I have seen in the local zoo.