Blue ringed octopus is just using tetrodotoxin though, it's not like they developed that toxin through evolution. Bacteria are the ones that made TTX so toxic. I'm not impressed.
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Bacteria be like "You merely adopted the tetrodotoxin. I was born in it, molded by it..."
You never know when you'll need to kill a herd of elephants, better be prepared.
Yeah, but why possibly kill when you can definitely kill?!
And it isn't like you'll be punished evolutionarily if you ultra kill.
Making all that extra poison constantly ain't cheap. You also have to keep it from killing you. Which means they absolutely needed that much poison. What horror lies beneath Australia...
what lies beneath australia is tasmania and.. yeah, fair enough
I saw a snail hunting a pack of elephants yesterday, the elephant was screaming something about him being immortal and if he touched him he would die.
Waste of points, could spent it into INT or HP. Fucking glass cannon species.
I love Australia but I've always wondered what exactly it is about Australia that made evolution go "yes, let's make this place like Master Mode in BOTW where everything is OP, wants to kill you, and can one-shot you"
It's really more of an easy mode with a couple of super unlucky bullshit gameovers scattered around than a master mode. Look at how many builds have overtaken the Australian meta since their introduction: dogs, cats (okay, they're an apex predator everywhere), foxes, rabbits, cane toads, mice, rats, deer, camels, scottish thistles, horses… I could go on.
Castle doctrine but it's mother nature and also sometimes your house
The emus didnt only start a war with humans u know.
Fucking warmongering dinosaur cunts...
Perhaps we have not yet found the animals that they have had to kill in the past to survive....
They understood perfectly well, too bad that they have no idea what an elephant is so they got venom that could kill anything, just in case
They understood perfectly well, too bad that they have no idea what an elephant is so they got venom that could kill anything, just in case
Their ancestors knew. And they solved that problem.
Cone snails represent
Don't forget the sea kraits that live off the coast in Australian waters
Well, I guess they aren't a sea krait anymore, blabber mouth!
🥁
First line of defence
Wait until you hear about deadly toxin producing bacteria.
You only need about 6 kg of Clostridium botulinum to produce enough toxins to kill all mammals on earth.
Assumptions:
- weight of a single bacterium is 1 picogram
- a single bacterium produces 0.5 picograms of toxin
- All mammals on earth are 1.4 gigatons of mass
- a lethal dose is 150 nanograms per kg
Can I buy that on Amazon?
You can make it at home!
Yes but the delivery is a problem. How do we package, ship and then get each mammal on earth to ingest 150 ng of the toxin?
Well, if all it takes is 6 kg, I don't think it would be that hard to make like a few tons and fly around the world throwing a kg at a time into any body of water you find.
Sure, you wouldn't kill everyone, but probably most 🤷♂️
I think about 96% of mammal biomass is either humans or domestic animals so if we ignore the 4% wild animals it suddenly because a much easier task.
Like, throwing enough botulinum toxin into the ocean to kill all the whales would be annoying.
Are you a Batman villain, threatening to poison Gotham's water supply.
It would a lot less interesting.
Literally everyone dies except a few that drink only bottled water. Society is now 90% people who believe that alkaline water is magic
More likely 10-15% of people die then everyone figures out it's the water, identified the cause of death, develops filters to remove the toxin, and then the filter becomes commercialized.
Like the first half of the movie is just what you would expect from a batman movie, but then after thousands die and batman catches the villan it just conintues into a documentary about how this event eventully led to the "2026 Water protection law" and the political fights around it.
Genocide is evolutionary beneficial for the toxin producer, maybe there's a ring of truth to it. Poison everything around you, free up resources for yourself.
I always wondered if the toxin didn't kill the bacteria.
Bacteria doesn't have nerve cells.
Evolution is just future-proofing Australian animals.
I'm a fan of "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly"
Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS-
Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.
After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.
Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free.
HMM... Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. "DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA," he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE.
He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
They waited.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT-
"No, wait master. Here it comes."
Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up an caught the single sheet of paper.
He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.
"May I?" said Albert. Death handed him the paper.
"'Some of the sheep,'" Albert read aloud. "Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then."
Kill? Why not paralyze or severely wound? Slow enough that you can kill with I don't know a pointed stick, rock or gravity? Why make the venom do all the dirty work?
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Australian animals don't need to kill Elephants
Very few animals (probably none) that rely on venom have any need for killing elephants, including those who live near elephants. What's a spider supposed to do with a 2 ton carcass?
What's a spider supposed to do with a 2 ton carcass?
It's for the achievement.
Not anymore