Post what you are thinking right now, part two

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Spare a thought for the first Aboriginies that arrived in Australia. Faced with the megalania, likely apex predator or really big scavenger, like a Komodo dragon but several times the size. And the marsupial lion, with far more powerful front limbs and jaws than an African lion but without the speed. An ambush predator. The Aboriginies were still telling stories about them when the whites arrived but for many years they were thought to be urban myths (drop bears and giant goannas the size of cars).

The common snake in my neighbourhood is the brown snake. 2nd most venomous snake on Earth, injects enough venom with one bite to kill a quarter million mice. The most venomous is the inland taipan, which injects enough venom to kill a million mice. The extreme venom toxicity of Aussie snakes is apparently due to their prey being primarily reptiles for millions of years during which those reptiles developed stronger and stronger immunity and so the snakes needed to evolve stronger and stronger venom. A cold blooded arms race of sorts.

Here in Sydney we have the funnel web spider. I used to scoop those off the bottom of our pool when I was a kid and poke them with a stick to make sure they were dead. Of course they never were, even after 2 or 3 days underwater. And they'd adopt the striking pose and I'd leave them be. Stepping on a funnel web only pisses them off more.

Blue ringed octopi are common here as well. One of those little fuckers bites you and they shut down all voluntary muscle function while you are fully conscious with your eyes wide open. So you stop breathing and die. Standard first aid is to simply keep air moving through the lungs. The venom doesn't break down tissue or cause organ failure.

[Queen Victoria]

Finally realized that sometimes a mediocre decision is better than dithering.  I put on my big girl crown and did something that I'd been off-and-on agonizing for almost 2 years.  It turned out to be twice as rewarding as I would have settled for.

Time to live my life not by perfection, but by satisfaction.

[Lestat]

Never seen a blue ringed octopus in person, but the pictures and clips make them look amazing, the rings flashing on and off all over their body as they move. Did you know they don't produce their own venom? its the same toxin, a voltage-gated sodium channel blocker called tetrodotoxin, originally recognized in puffer fish (order Tetraodontiformes, hence the name), (in)famous for the japanese 'fugu' sushi, that knocks off a few diners a year from either eating too much, or eating it when it has been prepared with insufficient caution (the TTX within puffer fish is not evenly distributed, primarily within the skin, liver and innards, less in the flesh, but its still there)

Also found in some Amphibians (fire-bellied newts, genus Taricha, people have died from swallowing one of these little critters in the US as a stupid dare. Serves them right if you ask me. Also found in certain toads, of the genus Atelopus)


Hey, since you are local to the right area, could make a little cash (come to an agreement if your up for catching the little devils) I've been very interested in getting a new pet, and of the three candidates, a mouse spider (genus Missulena, not the araneomorph by the same name.) is high on the list, but I've never seen them for the 'unusual' pet trade, the other two ideas either being a Parabuthus scorpion, or more widows. Successfully bred brown widows (Latrodectus geometricus, native to the US, was rather surprised to find one in my kitchen one night. And it wasn't a mis-ID either, because the little bitch bit me once and I got what for. They usually aren't pissy, but this one had just laid egg sacks, one of which hatched, the other...ugh, I hardly like to think about what happened to them, all of them. Fucking butchered by the pigs after an illegal raid on the place. MICROWAVED for fucks sake.)

And I've been pet-less ever since. More ideal keeping animals here that can't wander. At least, not outside of known areas, so another cat isn't really practical, not a dog person, and either of them could  knock over something either valuable, or full of something that would harm or kill them, or lose me a lot of money, so another invertebrate pet is ideal.

Which area of aus. are you from? if you don't want to give a personal location, I don't even mean city, just general territory or compass direction, to get an idea of whats out there. I have something specific in mind, ever see M.occatoria round your area? large mygalomorph, quite distinctive, legs similar to Atrax or Hadronyche, and not dissimilar in build, indeed M.bradleyi, could be easily enough taken for a stockily built funnelweb. And rather oddly, the venom in the family, or the active primary component to it, missulenatoxin acts similarly to robustoxin/atraxotoxin from the funnelwebs and Hadronyche, its SO similar, despite them not being in the same family, that Atrax/Hadronyche antivenin is crossreactive with mouse spider venom. The males are the ones liable to be seen, as they are active hunters. Real good looking critters, bright red chelicera and just behind, and a metallic cobalt blue abdomen. The females are unlikely to be found unless actively searched for, as they spend most of their life in a burrow, like a trapdoor spider.

NOT one to get bitten by, if you are willing to keep an eye out while your out, as I mentioned, venom is pretty similar to funnelweb venom, although they are less likely to bite, and if they do, much more prone to giving a 'warning' dry-bite. Any export permits, I'd pay for of course.

Other potential pets...all seem to be arachnids  for some reason, most of the land-bound families are interesting, although some are either impractical to keep, like the Solifugae  (aka 'camel spiders' although they aren't spiders, impressive looking, but apparently incredibly hard to keep alive in captivity, possibly due to an insanely high metabolic rate, not surprising given the speed of the things, and that, lacking venom, they depend on a combination of speed and the 8-legged equivalent of a face made out of bolt-cutters. Not dangerous to people, but all the same, I'd not want to try keeping one, if expert arachid-keepers can't keep them alive for more than months.)

And (tail-less) whipscorpions are kind of appealing too, quite harmless, aside from being able to give a nip with fairly large chelicera, or swiping with their spiked, mantis-like claws. Aside from the vinegaroons/tailed whipscorpions, scorpions, and those whaddyacallem.....spider-shaped creatures...nonvenomous, mygalomorph spider type build, and very, very primitive, still bearing the abdominal segmentation as a vestige of evolutionary divergence of spiders and scorpions, the rest of the family, excluding harvestmen, you'd never see them kept as a pet, or else if you do, you don't want to (ticks...ew. I'm an animal lover alright, but ticks? even a tick's own mother couldn't love one)

[Al Swearegen]

Puffer fish venom is key ingredient in making zombies. I do not mean the supernatural zombies I mean the poor zombie slaves of Haiti. A practice I hope is no longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvius_Narcisse

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Lestat, I am in the Sydney area. I have never seen a mouse spider or a funnel web around my house. We have sandy soil which they don't seem to like. Apparently there are scorpions around here, though I've never seen one.

Funnel web spiders are aggressive, whereas mouse spiders are the opposite. The only case I've heard of someone being bitten was a toddler who thought one she found in the kitchen was a toy, and she was holding it and playing with it. There is no mouse spider anti venom... they used funnel web anti venom and it took a lot more anti venom to save her than it would to save someone from a funnel web bite.

The only reason that there aren't a lot more funnel web bites in Sydney is that they can't climb walls or even steps. So if you have even a single front step you're good. If you live above the ground floor you're good.

[renaeden]

I used to get scorpions in my ground floor flat. They scared me but I used to trap them and drop them over the fence where there was bushland.

Only other thing to be really careful about was/is redback spiders. They like to hide in dark places so lifting anything outside that's been there for a while is risky. Best to have gardening gloves on.

[odeon]

Ugh, sounds nasty.

[Lestat]

I bet most large mygalomorphs, could do it with a run-up. I don't recall any first-hand accounts of them getting that pissy, but they have the build, and some of the stories I've read from a guy who kept/keeps Phoneutria (brazillian wandering spiders) were pretty hairy. Would go absolutely psychotic, at least the adults, and apparently used to throw themselves up the walls of the glass tank, only to fail because the tank was taller than their momentum could carry them.

I wouldn't worry too much about redbacks Ren, you REALLY have to piss them off for them to bite you. Maybe your local ones are a bit hairy just for well, living there, but Latrodectus spiders, any of 'em, aren't vicious. And not fast enough to do a runner, tiny, araneomorph fangs that won't penetrate much in the way of a barrier between them and the bare skin either. And you aren't likely to die either, not since the development of antisera to the venom.

Hurts like a bitch though. Effect is sort of comparable to nerve agents, although the latter block degradation of normally released acetylcholine, alpha-latrotoxin from Latrodectus spp. venoms causes a huge flood-like release of the neurotransmitter without, AFAIK inhibiting cholinesterases, but the end results are pretty similar. At least on the 'not dead' end of the scale. I've been gotten by both, the anticholinesterase being of plant origin, and fuck me, both feel pretty much identical, in the case of what you could describe as a 'mild' poisoning from a nerve agent (anticholinesterase, they block the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine, a parasympathetic neurotransmitter, causing fluid hypersecretion from anywhere that can leak fluid, and several bits that aren't really intended to, as well directly causing godawful muscle spasms.)

I don't blame my former pet for doing it mind you, most new mothers are arses in the animal kingdom.
Probably why I was bitten, she'd just laid egg sacks. Can't be fun popping something huge out of a tiny hole, no matter how you want to swing that one. Two legs or four, or eight, one just comes with more biting than swearing. Otherwise, not much different.

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

My father used to get bitten by redbacks on a fairly regular basis. Poor redbacks never survived the venom.

Actually he appeared to have built up a resistance to the venom, or he wasn't particularly susceptible. The burning sensation would keep him awake at night afterwards though.

Lestat, yes, I'm pretty sure a motivated funnel web could leap up a step. But they are not climbers, not like a big hairy huntsman spider that will scurry up your walls and across your ceiling.

[Lestat]

At least if it does, its a lot less to worry about.  I'd far sooner have a huntsman spider drop on my face than a funnel-web thats for sure. If I had to have either, that is. I have had an octopus stuck on my face though. Funny as hell, went scuba diving in turkey on holiday, turned over this large sea snail shell to take a look at the inhabitant, thinking 'harmless and tame enough' (a generic large snail, not the highly dangerous cone-snails, although I probably still have a Conus shell that I found walking along a beach (dried out, and very, very carefully examined to ensure it didn't have a living critter in there, if you aren't familiar, they have an extrusible proboscis that they hunt with, using a venomous tethered dart, a highly modified radular tooth, and in the case of some of the deadlier and larger species, such as Conus textile, the tens to perhaps a couple of hundred microliters of venom injected per tooth, which they can shoot in any direction, is enough to kill several adult humans, one of them, not sure which species, resulted in the development of a radically effective new painkiller, derived from one of the conotoxins, a non-opiate, called ziconotide [brand name 'prialt', might sound a bit gay but I suppose its better than telling people 'hold still, we are going to inject snail loogie into your spinal canal'] thats some 10,000x the potency of morphine.

Only problem is, being a peptide, and behaving as peptides often do, it isn't bioavailable orally, and has to be given via an implanted spinal pump. So not making it as a mainstream go-to yet in that specific incarnation.

Building up a resistance to repetitive injection of a venom is how antisera are raised, as the venoms of many animals are peptidic or large proteins in nature, not counting low molecular weight 'additives' designed to cause local pain and elicit defensive  withdrawal of a threat, such as serotonin, noradrenaline and the like.  And its often a vastly complex system of complimentary toxins with synergistic properties, and to serve as a sort of chemical swiss army knife, for taking down prey, some to paralyze it, some fatal via various means, some creatures also injecting proteases to break the prey's insides down to soup. Across the funnelwebs alone, (Atrax, Hadronyche, Illawarra) there are something like 400 different peptidic components of the venoms, in the males, and twice that diversity in females.

For all their nasty potential, theres an awful lot of things we have yet to discover and apply to medicine. For example, ever heard of a scorpion known as the deathstalker? (Leiurus quinquestriatus, and the name is applied to others in the genus Leiurus, found in iraq, iran, and likely as not in what we may as well rename 'wemadeahelluvamess-o-potamia') Notorious for being perhaps the most deadly scorpion out there, in terms of the venom potency (although I'd still rather be stung by it than Hemiscorpius, at least for survivors, they come out in the same shape, and having the same number of bodyparts as when they arrived at a hospital), theres a compound in the venom, called chlorotoxin, which selectively binds to malignant glioma cells, one of the nastiest cancers of the brain going.

I can see things we could do with it, potentially, or something designed via computational chemistry to calculate both the amino-acid residues involved in that binding, and in its action as a toxin, and attach some sort of radioisotope to it, say, tag it with either a radioisotope designed to function as a unit, like modern MAB therapies with high specific binding to the target alone, and deliver radiotherapy less like a baseball bat and more like a laser scalpel, or else radiolabelled with a positron-emitting isotope, say, fluorine 18, decaying almost entirely via positron emission (with a branch chain of 3% for electron capture), and short half-life, with fluorine often functioning as a bioisostere for a hydrogen atom due to its small atomic radius, why bombard the patient with external radiation, when you can deliver it right to the doorstep of your target as a letterbomb, rather than trying to swat flies with a tactical nuke?

As far as climbing goes, presumably that only goes for Atrax, and the terrestrial Hadronyche species? not sure about Illawarra, as the genus was only recently discovered, and assigned to within the Atraxinae clade (Hadronyche, Atrax and Illawarra, but not Missulena, surprisingly enough) Some of the funnelwebs are arboreal. So presumably they have to be good enough to climb non-smooth surfaces?

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Deathstalker. Yes, I've heard of those. Kind of an apt name.

Sydney Funnel Webs are ground dwellers and poor climbers. I didn't know there were arboreal funnel webs. I would guess that the "poor climber" tag really only applies to the ground dwelling funnel webs.

Huntsman spiders creep me out. They are active hunters and they are big and fast. Fast enough to catch roaches. Arachnophobia is a fairly normal state for Aussies, at least those of us who grew up with parents and teachers constantly warning us that spiders would kill us. A lot of people actually believe that huntsman spiders are not venomous. Which is nonsense, of course. Their bite has about the same potency as a bee sting. I've seen people pick them up and play with them in the belief that they won't bite. And even when provoked they won't bite unless you virtually force them to. If one dropped on your face you'd be safe as houses.

[Al Swearegen]

Then there are redbacks



Not a lot of redbacks in Canberra but there were a shitload in WA.

[renaeden]

I have had a Huntsman spider run over my face at work at the mushroom farm. Two people saw it and they both screamed. It ran to the top of my head so I yanked my hairnet off and dropped it on the ground. That was one big spider. It must have dropped from a trolley above me.

[Lestat]

LMAO.  Oh boy, am I gonna have a fun time if ever I get to meet you Ren....

That said, compared to most women (not intended in a sexist manner, you know I've more respect for you than that. Just not quite enough not to prank you with large, if harmless, big hairy spiders if there were an opportunity...well I do respect you tons, but I'd still drop a wolf spider down the back of your neck...at least, if I could be sure of it's safety, having a body with your skeleton on the outside makes for dropping being rather worse than with it on the inside. )

And MOSW-yes, Atrax is the genus commonly most encountered, I'd imagine, the sydney funnelweb being the most (in)famous member, Hadronyche are, afaik more rural, or at least, preferring either dense cover, some being raptorial ground-favouring hunters, but several of them are arboreal. Hadronyche spp. have a pretty similar venom to funnelwebs, different in that it doesn't apparently contain atraxotoxin, but produces a similar effect. That alone doesn't say much, as so do the scorpion alpha-toxins, plenty nasty little venomous things out there that target the inactivation kinetics of voltage-gated sodium channels on nerves, causing sustained, repetitive firing, but that funnelweb antivenin is polyvalent against Hadronyche and Missulena, is extremely suggestive of strutural homology, as antibodies recognize target structures, rather than modes of action, but a sufficiently similar antibody/substrate pair can mismatch, giving rise to the likes of crossreactive antivenin and indeed, as much disease as cure, targeting our own body, autoantigens as they are known, self-produced antibodies directed at a target and missing by a hair, or finding its target expresses the same protein as performs a useful function.

The latter case, for example has a fascinating manifestation, in females, usually, due to ovarian teratomas, in anti-NMDAr encephalitis, an autoimmune attack directed against NMDA-type ionotropic glutamate receptors, which are involved heavily in learning and memory, in a process known as long-term potentiation, when in the brain, where they are meant to be. The tumor expresses NMDA receptors, and an autoantibody is formed directed against the aberrant tissue type, but due to NMDA receptors being a vital primary part of the central nervous system (blockade of NMDA receptors is responsible for, for example, the dissociative effects of nitrous oxide/laughing gas, alcohol (sedative effects primarily being caused by GABAa receptor agonism), and by  PCP, ketamine , direct agonists being less well known, as the ionotropic glutamate receptors aren't places you want excess stimulation going on, in each case, be it NMDARs, AMPA receptors or KA (kainate) receptors, the result is ugly, hyperexcitation leading to selective death of cell populations. In the case of NMDARs, agonists, such as ibotenic acid, the unstable toxin in fly agaric mushrooms which decarboxylates to form a psychotropic GABAa orthosteric (orthosteric binding is binding competitively with the native ligand for a binding site, as opposed to allosteric binding sites, which occupy an alternative site, on a receptor protein complex and influence say, the gating kinetics of ion channels is common, with classic examples being muscimol, the decarboxylation product of ibotenic acid, turning it from nasty ass neurotoxin used to lesion animal brains in fucked up studies, to a sacrament, in some cultures, muscimol induces a weird, dissociated deep-sleep like trance state, after an initial excitatory state characterized by muscular twitching, and while asleep, it causes visions, of a sort somewhat resembling zolpidem/ambien, although different, with muscimol competing for GABA at the receptor binding site, whilst both zolpidem, or benzodiazepines, barbiturates, along with endogenous neurosteroids and the active sedative in valerian root, all label different binding sites, although its somewhat different with zolpidem and its relatives, in that they are subtype-selective binders to the benzodiazpine-sensitive, picrotoxin-insensitive site.)

Anyhow, as a result of these tumours, there's an autoantibody formed, directed at NMDA receptors, and it causes both a brain inflammation, as well as delirious dissociative effects such as would characterise a huge OD of ketamine or PCP in many respects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-NMDA_receptor_encephalitis

[Lestat]

I've seen that picture before, I think. Or at least a similar one, quite incredible how such a tiny creature can capture and overpower a snake without itself being flattened in the process, and how the silk can hold its weight. IIRC the pic I'm thinking of wasn't a redback, can't have been, there are no bright green, highly arboreal snakes in aus, are there? I think it was a boomslang, one of the few colubrids (rear-fanged snakes) venomous enough to take out a human, as boomslang snakes, along with twig snakes (Theletornis) are relatively primitive, having fangs at the rear of the jaw, so can't strike as efficiently as an elapid or viper, but these two species at least, possess a potent haemolytic venom, but in the picture, one was dead as doornails, trussed up like a fucking xmas turkey, after being bitten by some or other african Latrodectus.

And for such a fragmentary, messy web (this, it seems is characteristic of widow spiders in general, messy, unpatterned or woven intermeshed fibers strung from branches, its perfect for them and seems to be a favoured site for nesting.) its bloody strong.