3 ms·

Always interesting to me how much fear people have of wild animals. Rattlesnakes aren't dangerous and they're at 100000x more risk of being killed by a human t

by nxzero 10y ago

Always interesting to me how much fear people have of wild animals. Rattlesnakes aren't dangerous and they're at 100000x more risk of being killed by a human than killing anyone.

kurthr 10y ago
I grew up with snakes in Texas from Water Moccasins and Coral snakes to Diamond Backs... they aren't safe, if you're sleeping on the ground, walking around in brush and can't see, or are climbing a rock wall you can easily be bitten. It's easy to get thrown from a horse too. The worst are young children and pets who don't know better, which can be killed or lose a limb, especially by a baby rattler (they don't strike and release... keep pumping poison), if you're not within 30min of a hospital. Most hospitals don't carry anti-venom any more either, because it's expensive and it goes bad. I saw a 2-3foot (baby no rattle) western diamond back cruise through our camp of ~20 people, 3 children <6yr, and 2 dogs at 5pm over last Perseid weekend. It wasn't safe, and I was much more careful walking in the brush after. No one tried to kill it, but I'd put the chance of it biting someone/dog at more than 1/100 not 1/100k!! We never saw Mama.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is similar to my experience spending a lot of time in the desert areas of the south western US. Basically there were things you could do that would exponentially increase your likelihood of being bitten. Examples being sticking your hand under rocks or into holes. Understanding that snakes moderate their body temperature by moving from shade to sun to shade again allows you to quickly see spots that a snake would find attractive. Usually a surface in the early morning or late evening sunlight, next to a place where a snake could be in the shade but have some awareness of its surroundings. Once you figure that out, you can easily spot places that snakes would like to hang out and either avoid them, or as I was prone to do in my youth, go find them.
- nxzero 10y ago
  In the United States you have about a one in 50 million chance of dying from snake bite; five people die a year from snake bites. Cars alone kill 100k to million snakes a year; not to mention how many people they kill too. Please stay in the city if your afraid of animals.
  - BearOso 10y ago
    Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ If you never leave an urban area, your chances are even lower than one in 50 million. But if you live in a house on this particular lake, how many orders of magnitude does that chance increase if they dump thousands of snakes nearby?
    - nxzero 10y ago
      Only 5 people a year are killed by snakes, while tens of thousands are killed by cars. As for having 1000s of snake nearby, no, I don't think it would make for any meaningful increase in danger; I've seen someone go into a cave full of thousands of rattlesnakes; hint, nothing bad happened. If you read the notes on the link below, most of the deaths sound avoidable; aka leave snakes alone, know how to treat a snake bite, get medical attention, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in...
      - ivanhoe 10y ago
        Well, I'm sure people would also object if someone decides to bring thousands of cars to their neighbourhood :) Speaking of snakes (or any other dangerous animal) it's not a fair statistics to count in just the deadly encounters. One should take into the account also how much the local population had to modify their behaviour to avoid those attacks. Statistics say that sharks rarely attack people, but also it's a fact that people don't go that often into the water in the areas with dangerous shark populations. Same thing with other dangerous animals like gators or poisonous spiders or scorpions. You learn to avoid risky behaviour and take extra care of pets and children, so stats of deadly attacks are low, but it comes at extra cost for people living there not being able to be relaxed and do things they otherwise would be doing.
Turing_Machine 10y ago
"Usually not fatal" and "not dangerous" are not the same thing. Getting bitten by a rattlesnake is excruciatingly painful and can cause long-term health issues. Slamming your hand in a car door is rarely fatal. That doesn't mean you want to do it.
- nxzero 10y ago
  There are are less than 10,000 venomous bites a year in the US. High school athletes account for an estimated 2 million injuries and 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year; and that's ONLY high school athletes. Snakes are not dangerous.
  - ivanhoe 10y ago
    Those stats are just not comparable. First of all you can't just compare the absolute numbers for the complete high-school population with just the people who have a realistic chance of being bitten by a poisonous snake. We'd need to have the stats per capita to make it sort of comparable. But still it's not the same kind of event. How many of those sport injuries can be fatal if not treated within 30-60 minutes? How many of them hurt as much and can lead to you loosing a limb, or be left with permanent and serious health issues? How many pets gets killed by snakes and how many by their owners being high-school athletes? And I'm not saying that snakes are a huge danger to the general public, but they are the significant factor of risk for people who spend time in nature in those areas.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    You are using an idiosyncratic definition of "not dangerous". There were zero people killed by nuclear weapons last year in the US. Therefore, by your definition, nuclear weapons are not dangerous. I think we can all see the problem with this definition.
- 13of40 10y ago
  Anyone who doesn't believe this needs to look up "rattlesnake bite" on google images. (Warning: graphic, of course) That said, it's usually possible to avoid getting bitten if you know what to look for and what to do. They're generally willing to just slither in the other direction unless they're being threatened, but that doesn't really help if you, for example, accidentally step on one on the trail.

by nxzero 10y ago

Always interesting to me how much fear people have of wild animals. Rattlesnakes aren't dangerous and they're at 100000x more risk of being killed by a human than killing anyone.

kurthr 10y ago

I grew up with snakes in Texas from Water Moccasins and Coral snakes to Diamond Backs... they aren't safe, if you're sleeping on the ground, walking around in brush and can't see, or are climbing a rock wall you can easily be bitten. It's easy to get thrown from a horse too. The worst are young children and pets who don't know better, which can be killed or lose a limb, especially by a baby rattler (they don't strike and release... keep pumping poison), if you're not within 30min of a hospital. Most hospitals don't carry anti-venom any more either, because it's expensive and it goes bad. I saw a 2-3foot (baby no rattle) western diamond back cruise through our camp of ~20 people, 3 children <6yr, and 2 dogs at 5pm over last Perseid weekend. It wasn't safe, and I was much more careful walking in the brush after. No one tried to kill it, but I'd put the chance of it biting someone/dog at more than 1/100 not 1/100k!! We never saw Mama.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is similar to my experience spending a lot of time in the desert areas of the south western US. Basically there were things you could do that would exponentially increase your likelihood of being bitten. Examples being sticking your hand under rocks or into holes. Understanding that snakes moderate their body temperature by moving from shade to sun to shade again allows you to quickly see spots that a snake would find attractive. Usually a surface in the early morning or late evening sunlight, next to a place where a snake could be in the shade but have some awareness of its surroundings. Once you figure that out, you can easily spot places that snakes would like to hang out and either avoid them, or as I was prone to do in my youth, go find them.
nxzero 10y ago
In the United States you have about a one in 50 million chance of dying from snake bite; five people die a year from snake bites. Cars alone kill 100k to million snakes a year; not to mention how many people they kill too. Please stay in the city if your afraid of animals.
- BearOso 10y ago
  Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/ If you never leave an urban area, your chances are even lower than one in 50 million. But if you live in a house on this particular lake, how many orders of magnitude does that chance increase if they dump thousands of snakes nearby?
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Only 5 people a year are killed by snakes, while tens of thousands are killed by cars. As for having 1000s of snake nearby, no, I don't think it would make for any meaningful increase in danger; I've seen someone go into a cave full of thousands of rattlesnakes; hint, nothing bad happened. If you read the notes on the link below, most of the deaths sound avoidable; aka leave snakes alone, know how to treat a snake bite, get medical attention, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in...
    - ivanhoe 10y ago
      Well, I'm sure people would also object if someone decides to bring thousands of cars to their neighbourhood :) Speaking of snakes (or any other dangerous animal) it's not a fair statistics to count in just the deadly encounters. One should take into the account also how much the local population had to modify their behaviour to avoid those attacks. Statistics say that sharks rarely attack people, but also it's a fact that people don't go that often into the water in the areas with dangerous shark populations. Same thing with other dangerous animals like gators or poisonous spiders or scorpions. You learn to avoid risky behaviour and take extra care of pets and children, so stats of deadly attacks are low, but it comes at extra cost for people living there not being able to be relaxed and do things they otherwise would be doing.

Turing_Machine 10y ago

"Usually not fatal" and "not dangerous" are not the same thing. Getting bitten by a rattlesnake is excruciatingly painful and can cause long-term health issues. Slamming your hand in a car door is rarely fatal. That doesn't mean you want to do it.

nxzero 10y ago
There are are less than 10,000 venomous bites a year in the US. High school athletes account for an estimated 2 million injuries and 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations each year; and that's ONLY high school athletes. Snakes are not dangerous.
- ivanhoe 10y ago
  Those stats are just not comparable. First of all you can't just compare the absolute numbers for the complete high-school population with just the people who have a realistic chance of being bitten by a poisonous snake. We'd need to have the stats per capita to make it sort of comparable. But still it's not the same kind of event. How many of those sport injuries can be fatal if not treated within 30-60 minutes? How many of them hurt as much and can lead to you loosing a limb, or be left with permanent and serious health issues? How many pets gets killed by snakes and how many by their owners being high-school athletes? And I'm not saying that snakes are a huge danger to the general public, but they are the significant factor of risk for people who spend time in nature in those areas.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  You are using an idiosyncratic definition of "not dangerous". There were zero people killed by nuclear weapons last year in the US. Therefore, by your definition, nuclear weapons are not dangerous. I think we can all see the problem with this definition.
13of40 10y ago
Anyone who doesn't believe this needs to look up "rattlesnake bite" on google images. (Warning: graphic, of course) That said, it's usually possible to avoid getting bitten if you know what to look for and what to do. They're generally willing to just slither in the other direction unless they're being threatened, but that doesn't really help if you, for example, accidentally step on one on the trail.