Internal bleeding is the other major complication of taipan bites. In fact, the kidneys are often badly damaged by filtering so much tissue debris out of the blood and kidney failure is a common complication in serious snake-bites and a frequent cause of death. The urine of a bite victim often turns reddish-brown as their muscles dissolve and are passed through the kidneys. Blurred vision follows, sometimes accompanied by convulsions and, in severe cases, coma.Īs if this were not bad enough, the neurotoxin (like many other snake venoms) is also a myotoxin, meaning it eats away at muscle tissue. The toxin binds to the ends of the nerves, blocking electrical activity and shutting down communication between the brain and muscles.Īs the poison spreads the victim experiences headache, nausea, vomiting, pain in the belly and dizziness. The taipan neurotoxin acts at the point where nerves join to muscles, called the neuro-muscular junction. It essentially scrambles the body's communication lines - the nerves that carry electrical signals around the body. The most deadly component is a neurotoxin that immobilises by paralysis. Dr Julian White, a snake venom expert from the Women and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, says the venom does the damage in two different ways: In a single strike, a taipan can inject 60mg of venom - enough to quickly paralyse a small marsupial but also more than enough to wipe out several human adults. Unlike most snakes, the taipan is a specialist mammal hunter so its poison is specially adapted to knock out warm-blooded furry creatures like ourselves. Those unlucky enough to have a taipan sink its 12 millimetre fangs into their skin are injected with an extremely nasty chemical cocktail. microlepidotus only lives in the arid deserts of central eastern Australia and no human death has been reported from its bite. Yet its cousin, the inland taipan ( Oxyuranus microlepidotus) is actually more deadly and, drop-for-drop, produces the most lethal poison of any snake in the world. The coastal taipan ( Oxyuranus scutellatus) has earned a reputation as the country's most feared snake because it sports the biggest fangs, one of the most lethal venoms and a rather aggressive nature - an unsettling combination if you find yourself in the parts of north Queensland and the Northern Territory which it calls home. We have chosen the most poisonous snake, the inland taipan, the most lethal spider, the funnel web, and the much under-recognised platypus, whose bashful personality hides a set of poisonous spurs that cause the most exquisite, excruciating pain. Here we take a look at Australia's big three poisonous animals and exactly how their toxins cause us so much grief. And even before Aborigines set foot on our antipodean shores, Aussie animals were a bad bunch.ĭr Tim Flannery, a mammologist and bush wildlife expert from the Australian Museum, thinks the testiness of our creatures has something to do with the harshness of the Australian countryside - in a tough country, only the meanest and leanest survive. So what is it that encourages such brutish behaviour in Australian animals? Humans aren't to blame - archaeologists insist the Australian bush was teeming with vicious creatures long before convicts and public floggings made it onto the continent. Our spiders out-perform the best biters from anywhere around the globe and, when it comes to causing pain, even the cute platypus produces one of the most excruciating venoms known. Of the planet's top ten most deadly snakes, Australia has the lot. One of the privileges of being Australian is getting to share this wide brown land of ours with some of the world's most painful and poisonous creatures. (Click here for an overview of this article)
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