Spider bites

The Snark

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I would add, MMO is a sliding scale. By no means black and white. A person buys an axe to cut firewood and carries it out of the store. Call it MMO level 1. A person with a loaded assault rifle holes up in a hotel room and has a few short circuits in the brain hotel. MMO 100.
Spiders have a MMO in the region of 1-10 or so. Some snakes are near MMO 100 as pit vipers and strike zones.
 
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Crone Returns

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People don't look where they step or check to make sure that watering hose they're reaching for is actually a watering hose.
Yeah, it's always a bummer to be reaching for firewood and it turns into a pissed off rattler:rolleyes:.
 

Greasylake

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Yeah, it's always a bummer to be reaching for firewood and it turns into a pissed off rattler:rolleyes:.
Once I was helping build a new, I guess ampitheatre, at a campsite I frequented and that entailed clearing brush and cutting down trees to make a small clearing large enough for them to put in benches and a small stage and whatnot. Around midday, after working for a few hours my friend and I went to pick up and move a log and as soon as we lifted it up my friend dropped it and ran back a few feet. There was a copperhead coiled up in a crevice on the side of the trunk that had been laying on the ground.
 

Crone Returns

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Once I was helping build a new, I guess ampitheatre, at a campsite I frequented and that entailed clearing brush and cutting down trees to make a small clearing large enough for them to put in benches and a small stage and whatnot. Around midday, after working for a few hours my friend and I went to pick up and move a log and as soon as we lifted it up my friend dropped it and ran back a few feet. There was a copperhead coiled up in a crevice on the side of the trunk that had been laying on the ground.
YIKES!
 

The Snark

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In hindsight, one of the funniest encounters I've ever had.
On my horse, just crossed a river and he stomped up an embankment. He stopped suddenly, ears (horse radar you can watch in action) on full alert. Rattler buzz, nearby. That stupid sound rattlers make is often omni-directional. Can be really hard to tell where it's coming from, especially when your head is 8 feet in the air. We went into a comedy routine. I look left and scan as the horse looks right, then reverse. He's standing like a statue, ears now twitching trying to locate the direction. I started to get off. At least I've got high topped heavy leather boots. The buzz got louder. Righted myself in the saddle.
Then we had a mutual epiphany. OH! I dug my heels in and shouted GO!!, him being voice trained, as he had just decided what to do. The Pegasus thing. No exaggeration, a good 8 feet standing broad jump. The rattler was square underneath him.
 

Crone Returns

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In hindsight, one of the funniest encounters I've ever had.
On my horse, just crossed a river and he stomped up an embankment. He stopped suddenly, ears (horse radar you can watch in action) on full alert. Rattler buzz, nearby. That stupid sound rattlers make is often omni-directional. Can be really hard to tell where it's coming from, especially when your head is 8 feet in the air. We went into a comedy routine. I look left and scan as the horse looks right, then reverse. He's standing like a statue, ears now twitching trying to locate the direction. I started to get off. At least I've got high topped heavy leather boots. The buzz got louder. Righted myself in the saddle.
Then we had a mutual epiphany. OH! I dug my heels in and shouted GO!!, him being voice trained, as he had just decided what to do. The Pegasus thing. No exaggeration, a good 8 feet standing broad jump. The rattler was square underneath him.
I would've had to change my pants. I've seen the damage those germy fangs can do to people. Not pretty.
 

The Snark

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And you get pure stupid encounters. Me sticking my hand in a basement vent hole, probably banging against egg sacks and in moms face where she is lurking in her hide. Or a friends dog, hears rattler, sees rattler, sniffs rattler. He went around for a couple of weeks with a muzzle the size of a hefty cantaloupe, walking near sideways and peering at the world out of the corner of his eyes.
 

Crone Returns

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And you get pure stupid encounters. Me sticking my hand in a basement vent hole, probably banging against egg sacks and in moms face where she is lurking in her hide. Or a friends dog, hears rattler, sees rattler, sniffs rattler. He went around for a couple of weeks with a muzzle the size of a hefty cantaloupe, walking near sideways and peering at the world out of the corner of his eyes.
My first black lab decided to tangle with a diamondback. He really made that rattler irate. The snake bit him three times in the muzzle. He had about 3' of edema hanging down his chin(s). Couldn't bark. Only soft food. He was a blasted mess, but he wasn't going to die.
Meanwhile, about 5 days later, Mom here discovered she had been infested with poison oak. A toxic dose.
We were a miserable, pitiful pair.
 

NYAN

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Arizona poison control reports that 50-70% of snake bites occur when people are trying to kill or capture the snake.
 

The Snark

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Arizona poison control reports that 50-70% of snake bites occur when people are trying to kill or capture the snake.
We need more rattlers. A few million aerial dropped in trump infested nesting grounds.
 

SonsofArachne

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This spiders vs snakes thing can best be explained using criminal terminologies.

MMO. Means, Method and Opportunity. Required in all 'assault' crimes. Assault is defined as offense contact, physical, verbal, or otherwise conveying a threat.
Phoneutrai and male Atrax cross paths with humans by entering human occupied areas and have a great degree of MMO coupled to tacit assault -capability- the rare tag happens.
On the other hand, numerous snakes have real and present MMO near continuously whenever in human occupied areas. Assaults take place de-facto.

HOWEVER, enter culpability. Neither snakes nor spiders have culpability. About 99.9% of the times when an animal has culpability coupled to an assault it is protecting their territory or young or pack mentality as found in coyotes, dingos, and domesticated dogs.
I think we are mostly disagreeing on terminology, but I just won't accept the idea of venomous snakes attacking, or assaulting, humans. They are DEFENDING themselves from human assault. Remember, they have no idea of your intentions or even if you are aware of them, all their instincts tell them to defend themselves from any large animal (including humans) that gets to close.
 

Torech Ungol

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The Snark

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I think we are mostly disagreeing on terminology, but I just won't accept the idea of venomous snakes attacking, or assaulting, humans.
Misunderstanding most likely. I conjecture you are attributing faculties to snakes that they don't possess, the higher order brain. I used the word 'culpable' for a very specific reason. Essentially, responsible, blameworthy. This is a point of contention, especially in the frontal lobe challenged modern homo-erectus. Ex, a big cat hunted down a human and killed it. The act was deliberate, having malice aforethought. It was therefore responsible, culpable. I and many others, you too I suspect, contend animals cannot be culpable. While they connect dots, hunt down and kill humans, there is no higher order thought processes. Pack mentality is primal, genetic. Tracking, assaulting and killing, primal, genetic. Without the pre frontal cortex animals are blameless.
Rattler warmed up, hungry, coiled and ready to strike. No higher order brain functions connects it's sensory capabilities to determine what entered the strike zone. If the bite produces a mouthful of something, it was a mouse or lizard or whatever. See if it can be swallowed. If the strike produced nothing, it returns to the loaded aimed gun or the flee instinct kicks in. No culpability. No difference between it and a shark taking an opportunity bite.

The only snake that I am aware of that attaches some kind of thinking faculties is a king cobra. It will commit reactionary strikes if harassed but left to it's own devices it assumes a strange, watch and wait wariness that indicates some extra something is going on in it's brain.

Standoff. What's the plan, guy?


Something of interest. I have noted Hannah appears to have a dominant eye. They always have their head turned slightly to one side or the other, and always the same side. Like Dad pictured, right eye dominant.
Note his partner here. I went back several times to check these two. She is left eye dominant.


Have you *seen* how rednecks respond to potentially dangerous animals?
See snake, grab shotgun, shoot Guernsey, back door, and Ford.
 
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SonsofArachne

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I conjecture you are attributing faculties to snakes that they don't possess, the higher order brain
Actually, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. As I said before, they aren't capable of knowing your intent so when you approach them, by accident or design, you trigger their instinct for self defense. Where does higher brain function enter into that? In fact I was saying humans, with their big brains, come much closer to culpability by not thinking ahead and taking reasonable precautions where venomous snake occur.

Also, you seem to think a hungry snake can't determine by something size that it's not suitable to prey upon. Trust me, they can, and they don't need higher brain function to do so. Strikes at humans and large animals are defensive and may not even involve venom. If all their strikes were a feeding response, EVERY bite would include venom.
 

The Snark

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Actually, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. As I said before, they aren't capable of knowing your intent so when you approach them, by accident or design, you trigger their instinct for self defense.
I need to see some kind of study that shows there is a distinctive difference between defense and offense in all snakes, all the time.
 

SonsofArachne

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I need to see some kind of study that shows there is a distinctive difference between defense and offense in all snakes, all the time.
Of course there's a difference. Rattlesnakes' rattle, cobras' hood as a defensive threat display. They don't always do this before striking, but fact that they have these abilities and don't use them while hunting (in fact they would be detrimental in a hunt) means they have definite offensive and defensive capabilities.
 

The Snark

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Of course there's a difference. Rattlesnakes' rattle, cobras' hood as a defensive threat display.
No rattle when I got my leg bit. Plenty of venom. The saw scale that was startled and fired at my wife left venom on her pants leg. Guy killed last year by a Kaouthai. No hood, struck downward from a tree branch. I've seen or heard of numerous other deadly 'defense' strikes. O Hannah's favorite meal doesn't involve striking at all. A rattler in the Sierras struck at a horses leg, missed, uncoiled and moved closer and tried again. Repeated twice.
 

SonsofArachne

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No rattle when I got my leg bit. Plenty of venom. The saw scale that was startled and fired at my wife left venom on her pants leg. Guy killed last year by a Kaouthai. No hood, struck downward from a tree branch. I've seen or heard of numerous other deadly 'defense' strikes. O Hannah's favorite meal doesn't involve striking at all. A rattler in the Sierras struck at a horses leg, missed, uncoiled and moved closer and tried again. Repeated twice.
re-read my post, I said they don't always use their threat displays, but the fact that they have them and don't use them on prey means there is a difference between offence and defense.
 
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