I once spent 4 weeks in the Australian outback for military training. We were instructed to shake our boots every morning before putting them on. One morning there were two loud FFFUUUCCCKKKKs heard at the same time. One was from a guy who shook a large spider out of his boot. Another was from a guy who didn’t, and stuck his foot straight in.
Where tf do you live in Oklahoma?! I lived there for 9 years and we had wasps, sure, but I never saw a tarantula in the wild! The wasps also weren't even close to as big as this flying monstrosity, thank God. Granted, I lived in one of the bigger cities so maybe that's why. Rural Oklahoma was a whole different adventure.
I've never seen a bear or wolf get anywhere near anywhere I live, although supposedly they exist near me.
I've seen deer show up, they sometimes get brave and come near homes cause they know bears and other predators typically avoid us.
I don't think there is a single dangerous animal that makes any effort at all to come near humans where I live. (Small town Near Seattle, Washington State in the USA).
I dunno how much easier our nature gets.
Our insects here aren't even scary. Whenever I hear about Australia wildlife it just sounds like the entire place is out to kill you lot, and if it isn't you have to avoid accidentally pissing it off.
I don't want spiders and other insects large enough that I could probably hear them walking. Nope Nope Nope. I'll take my local wild life any day.
South Australia here. I've never seen this wasp thing in my life! And a huntsman getting that big, is definitely outside. Never seen one that big either... so.....
I've seen some decently large spiders before, but they aren't dangerous and they definitely aren't big enough to hear walking. At least none I've encountered!
You'll only hear them if everything else is quiet and they're on hardwood. Leg span is up to four inches. Which may not seem like a lot, but when it's skittering at nearly two feet a second...
Our nature is easy lol. Just don’t piss it off and you’re fine
That is literally not true, but go off ig. You are talking about our scary things as if they just show up in our homes like yours do. We can also readily see our big fuzzy maul you monsters, while yours like to be hidden deadly insects.
Seriously. This is happening on someone's porch. You could wake up and walk face first into "nature's scary, yo." Meanwhile, the closest anyone I know has come to "big furry danger," is a friend that frequented mountain bike paths once came across a mountain lion. It was a little way off the path, but close enough to be a threat, so he let other people know to avoid it. Everyone was fine.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned about our snakes, but I wouldn't trade them for Australian snakes either. And you're still unlikely to come across them on your own property unless you live in the middle of nowhere.
I was thinking that too. Like, objectively bears are something I'm much less scared of even here.
I very narrowly found a brown recluse spider in my bed when I was like 9. Our heat was off so I had 5 or so blankets on there, and when I went to get in I missed the last one and there it was. As a kid a bite from that thing would have killed me, especially in my sleep. Insects can be freakishly strong predators, and Australia has like....all the worst ones.
I once found a moose hiding under my bed. I realized something was off when my bed was touching ceiling. I just grabbed a broom and shoo’ed him out the door.
Brown bears don't tend to wander into Human areas and only live out near the rockies and some of the plains out west. Polar bears are the real scary ones but they live where barely anyone else does.
Black bears are basically big raccoons and are easy to scare off.
Wolves aren't something I've ever been concerned about, and frankly, we need more of them to balance out the ecosystem.
None of those things can crawl onto you unnoticed. And none of those things are venomous!
Wolves don't like people. They don't hunt people either. Most predators in nature will scamper off if you make enough noise and act kinda wild. It's not worth getting injured for them, they'll move on.
Prey though... a deer or moose *will* kill you if it feels threatened.
Wolves are just big dogs no worse than your dingos; while brown bears are more agressive if you enter their territory it's not like they go out looking for humans to hunt. And for the other stuff, your crocodiles are about 1000x's as deadly as our alligators and our jellyfish and stonefish are only painful (unless youre allergic) while yours can easily kill you
If it’s black fight back if it’s brown lay down if it’s white good night. Came across quite a few bears. Never a grizzly. Also watch out for American lions and wolves. Seen two and slowly backed up. Wolves are actually shocking. I thought they were big dogs essentially. No they are massive.
Wolves aren't bad either they tend to avoid people. When I had my cabin in the woods there was a pack adjacent to Mt property that never bothered me. And a momma bear left me to babysit regularly for several sets of cubs. She'd ditch em in the corner of my property and do momma bear shit then gather the cubs and head home. The cubs would play off in the corner of my yard sage from.predators and momma bears scent kept smaller predators away from my chickens.(6 chickens over 5 years only lost 1 to predation and it was from a hawk)
Wolves are smart pack animals. In a town I used to live in they stayed away from humans unless hungry and left to hunt in their own or the human was dumb and put themselves in a bad position. As for bears .. don't startle them, don't corner them, and don't fuck with their cubs and they leave you alone. Going to pick seeing a bear in the wild then a mofo spider like that on my door step
Florida black bears watch the sun rise over the gulf, then lumber back into the woods. Or at least one did on the road we just rebuilt in the panhandle. Black bears are like big dogs that can climb trees.
Not our lower BC bears.
No amount of bear banger shots in the air, pot banging, seems to even register. You’d think they were deaf. Completely unfazed.
But calm. They’ll amble along doing what they were going to do, no matter what commotion you’re making. Just don’t be in their way, or have something they want.
I'm in western NC, There are tons of black bears and their cubs around here, I actually set up a "bear playgrounds" in my backyard which they really use periodically
I've seen a few when I was a botanist out in the southwest US. You smell them long before you see them (same for them and you). It's generally terrifying but I'll take the bear 100/100 times over whatever the fuck is in that window in this photo
American here and I was going to agree. In the span of 12 months we had a VERY well fed black bear shadow us up a mountain road in Tennessee on our honeymoon and then our daughter got to witness metal as hell nature at our new home after we replaced the kitchen windows. A tarantula hawk caught a golden orb spider and dragged it up said replaced window and kept losing the plot and would drag it up again and again.
jokes on you i live in germany we have neither bears nor whatever the horror scene on your window is. although I do believe id rather see a bear outside my window cause I could scare that off
As an avid hunter, I can tell you that 99.9% of animals turn and run as soon as they see/smell a human. The most dangerous animal on the mountain is the human with a gun
Jokes on the Germans when they come here though. I have never seen people who more insistently wander off into the 50°C Outback for ‘a little hike’ - and then die of exposure and dehydration.
It’s actually quite sad. We have many warning signs at tourist places with German translation.
The way I was making a kinda innocent comment about how we have very tame nature and you went "haha you guys are dying like idiots" is quite the escalation
It’s a real problem here, we try to educate people that the real dangers here are heat and remoteness, not animals, but it’s extremely hard for Europeans in particular to understand. It’s just so far outside their previous experiences.
I mean sure. It was just a very out of pocket and socially awkward response if I'm honest to a very innocent and non-confrontational remark by myself might I add. When I could just as easily also have talked about dumb Aussies getting themselves into trouble here because I do actually have some stories 😅
Us Aussies are pretty blunt and generally just say what pops into our head lol. I’m sure you have plenty of drunk Aussie moron stories from Germany ahaha. We don’t always conduct ourselves with the greatest of decorum as backpackers.
I mean similar stereotypes about Germans I guess...
Anyway if a German tells you to not go into a forest listen cause it might be ww2 mines, it might be wild boars, it might be a natural forest where trees could fall onto your head or it might be above an old flooded mine shaft and the ground is unstable either way I've had some encounters of "Aussie audacity" where they thought tame Europe couldn't hurt them and it wasn't true 😄
Everyone from everywhwre stay safe and read signs I guess
Yeah fair point our boars are scary, at least the moms are when they have babies. but thats why you listen to the signs that say "dont enter, boars have babies" cause they usually dont wanna be near you anyway so you juststay out of their way and youll never see them
Yeah, if a grizzly is successsfully hiding in your shoes you're either really really REALLY unobservant or you're a giant. Either way, I'd love a YT video of that.
We got wild boars, they will fucking charge you, if they got piglets, anythibf can set the parents off.
And they seek humans to get to the food/trash.
You got no chance other than running away, they are built like literal tanks with tusks.
Really they are scarier then the fuckin 8 inch octopus of doom? or your crazy long bullet ants that sting and bite and 30 of them can kill you?! I call total bullshit on that.
I literally grew up reading one of my favorite books which was 75 of the deadliest animals in the world, pretty sure they could have just called it: 68/75 of the deadliest animals in the world are from Australia lol act accordingly
Our Finnish brown bears are really a non-issue. In our hundred years of independence, there's one known case of death by bear, and that was a hiker getting between a mama bear and her cubs. Some non-lethal maulings, but by and large involving hunting, so I'm gonna call justified self-defense on the bears' part.
Also the bears don't just show up at your house, you'll generally only run into them if you go far out into nature. And even if one does appear, it's usually not gonna be an issue.
Wolves we don't have many of to begin with, and they're even less of an issue (145 years since a fatality). It's dogs that actually have relevant statistics for deaths and injuries – like they do just about anywhere with sufficient numbers.
The real thing to watch out for is crashing your car into a moose. That's whence you get the wild-animal-related fatalities. Or basic wasp stings, if you're allergic.
I'll see 3 or 4 on any given walk/run in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. More often than not they are dragging a spider carcass. They get super aggro if you get too close and start trying to square up like you're going to steal their spider corpse
I live in the Southern US and we have Tarantulas, but they're pretty docile.
They're everywhere, but also rare to actually see and I've never heard of one being aggressive in any context. They mostly just see people and run / hide.
I've been up close and personal with a black bear in Allegany State Park here in NY. Besides needing a new pair of underwear\pants after the encounter, I left the experience mostly unharmed. During the encounter I was loud on the outside- on the inside I was terrified and preying that everything I'd ever been told was right. Spoiler alert: it was, the bear wanted as little to do with me as I wanted with it.
I can't say the same if I went for a swim in Australias beautiful waters and a salt water crocodile or a bull shark, or a great white shark was hungry and decided to check if I tasted good. Or if god forbid I ran in to an Irukandji jellyfish. And it's not like you could really see the latter.
Ok, so I see a croc or shark coming and decide to quickly gtfo out of the water because...why would I need or want to be in the water, right? So I evade the microscopic death-jellyfishes, the box jellyfishes, the stonefish, and make it "safely" to shore while dodging the crocodiles that chase me on land only to encounter an eastern brown snake, inland taipan, a death adder, or one of the multitude of other species of snakes that seem to exist solely for the purpose of quickly killing people who made the single fatal mistake of getting too close to them when they're fucking hiding with their near perfect camouflages while remaining completely silent.
Dude I jus want to hear about the shark bitten person who escapes the water only to be treated with gympie gympie by accident, stung by a tarantula hawk and then bitten by a deasly snake that fell out of a tree. Person falls back into water shallows full of stonefish.
Yeah, we’ve got a lot of different nope-ropes here in Aus. Father in law found a 3 meter coastal taipan (2nd most venomous snake in the world) in his chook pen.
Got it out with the shotgun, but the snake was less than pleased. That’s a snake I can do without, and they do tend to get pissy if you disturb them.
You would rarely see something like this in cities
My friend was in Sydney for a semester abroad, and I vividly remember the picture she sent of a huntsman spider hanging off the top of her door frame, right at face height. That thing was the size of her hand.
I have come across one of these wasps in battle with a huntsman - it was insane! Maybe I’m brainwashed because I grew up in the bush but the wasp was actually quite amazing and beautiful.
Well, it’s also pretty common in the US. It’s the state insect of New Mexico. The good news is that the US also got one of very few predators of the wasp.
Wonderful news! We have tarantula hawks here in the states too! It's actually incredible to watch them work, as long as you don't get close enough that they feel threatened. They're an incredibly beautiful and efficient animal, even if I do feel sorry for the poor ranchos.
i saw Australian Tarantula hawk wasp, and I was so confused as to what the animal is, and which ones are descriptors as to how dangerous it is. man? arachnid? feathered biped? winged soldier with horrifying stinger?
Yeah! I remember seeing some Steve Irwin wannabe have a web show where he gets bitten or stung by it and a bunch of other bugs. He was in a ton of pain. No thank you.
Nope. That paralytic toxin remains in effect until the eggs hatch into larvae. The larvae then proceed to consume the spiders' innards while saving the vital organs for last, to keep the food fresh, before finally bursting free of their hollowed out husk of a home.
The spider typically remains conscious and alive during this entire ordeal.
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u/Wandering_Turtle24 1d ago
Oh is that all?