Wasn't "mean" at all...was just a comment of fact.

I managed to see one of Bill Haast's snake milking shows back in the 70's when I was a wee lad. He milked a wide variety of cobras, rattlesnakes, vipers etc. He played with them and had them follow his hand before extracting the venom.

The only one he took seriously was a krait. He handled it's box gingerly and seemed very nervous. He flipped it onto the table and it instantly shot off the table towards the crowd. The only thing seperating the table from the crowd was a velvet rope. He managed to grab the tip of the snakes tail and yank it back onto the table and immediatly pinned it down with his crook. He proceeded to milk and that was the end of the snake show. It turns out that krait bites kill 50% of the time even when anti-venom is used.

I have since learned that when an experienced expert is really nervous that is a good time to back away, way far away.

Taipans are large, fast, highly venomous snakes with large fangs and large amounts of venom.  Prior to the introduction of antivenom (in 1955) and modern medical care, more than 90% of taipan envenomations were fatal. Two distinct species are described in Australia the coastal taipan and the western or inland taipan, or fierce snake.

Here's a nice little description.....a bite From a Sydney Funnel Web spider....[deadliest 8 legged thingie]...

Remind me not to get bitten...

Symptoms and signs of envenomation include:

Numbness around the mouth and spasms of the tongue

Nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, acute gastric dilatation

Profuse sweating, salivation, lacrimation, piloerection

Local and generalized muscle fasciculation and spasm, commencing in facial tongue or intercostal muscles, and including trismus, which may necessitate paralysing the patient with muscle relaxants in order to manage the airway

Dyspnoea

Confusion, irrationality, coma which may persist in the presence of normalized ventilation, oxygenation and blood pressure, and may be related to raised intracranial pressure

Hypertension, vasoconstriction, tachycardia and cardiac arryhthmias  ? related to release and subsequent depletion of neurotransmitter

Widely dilated pupils, which may be fixed

Acute non-cardiogenic pulmonary oedema

Later, the severely envenomed patient may develop progressive hypotension and apnoea.  These features may relate to depletion of neurotransmitter.

Leaving Lepidoptery....

Info on the Taipan....

Oxyuranus microlepidotus (Inland Taipan) is far and away the most toxic land snake in the world, with a lethal dose estimated to be fifty times that of the Indian cobra Naja naja. The venom has a potent neurotoxic mechanism that causes a significant loss of synaptic vesicles and other neuropathology's similar to that elicited by taipoxin from O. scutellatus. However, a specific neurological factor has not been isolated which can be held responsible for the acute potency of this venom. In addition, unlike the venom from scutellatus or the common tiger snake Notechis scutatus, this specie, like the eastern brown snake Pseudonaja textilis, has a procoagulant property that does not require the presence of the cofactors calcium, factor V or phospholipid in order to activate normal prothrombin or the decarboxylated form in a concentration-dependent manner.

Venom toxicity is 0.0l mgs per kg....average venom yeild 44.2 mgs....that adds up to 4420 kgs of dead people per snake....

Leaving Lepidoptery....

Butterflies?

Assume you mean Herpetology ?

Chris....

"Leaving Lepidoptery, please don't play with the displays, little boy...."

The Black Widow. [a relative of the Red Back]

Vincent Price....from Alice Cooper's 'Welcome to my Nightmare'

Ewwww, I change my mind about Australia! It has it's good and bad and it's bad is really bad!
"Leaving Lepidoptery, please don't play with the displays, little boy...."
I didn't know that was Vincent Price! That is the greatest Alice Cooper album ever, except the "Cold Ethel"(sp?) song of course.....It's just downright gross.
[Message Edited]

OK, OK, I give up ! The Aussies win that one.

I've heard that Funnel Web Spiders like houses and construction sites. That would be enough for me to say I would consider not moving there.

Jafo, I hate to be a pedant but...

SYLLABICATION: lep·i·dop·ter·y
VARIANT FORMS: also lep·i·dop·ter·ol·o·gy (-t-rl-j)
NOUN: The branch of entomology that deals with lepidopterans.

1) lepidopteran. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
...An insect belonging to the large order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths, characterized by four membranous wings covered with small scales.

I'm amazed Alice Cooper would be so mis-informed

Aussies don't have the deadliest scorpion though.... hehe

jafo, try as you might, i'm still more afraid of anything comming from africa then i am of anything austrialian.

Chris....I paraphrased Mister Cooper....he [Price] was talking about the insect section...when 'leaving Lepidoptery' was mentioned....then he moves on to the Arachnids....so he wasn't wrong at all.....and I was merely being amusing....no intention of accuracy or pedantry....

DC...As for 'deadly animals'....check them out some time.....none of the variations come much like a 'second'...