Come to Australia and learn to handle venomous snakes

We like to joke with visitors about the venomous wildlife in Australia. I mean we even have a venomous mammal (well, sort of mammal). But as we have 20 of the world’s top 25 venomous snakes, we sometimes need to teach snake handling for the workplace.

And somebody posed a question yesterday: when did spiders get their nasty reputation? Spiders are almost always regarded as good luck or useful creatures in the literature before the 20th century. I used to keep red backed spiders as a kid, and feed huntsmen by hand, much to my mother’s horror. So, snakes or spiders, we got them all in Australia. Come visit.