Week 11 – Audio Lesson: Listen & Read

Refer to lesson PDF for transcript with highlighted vocabulary (download here).

Pete: So, the only thing I remember this week from the news was a shark attack in Western Australia. Did you hear about that one? 

Ian: Yes. Yeah.

Pete: That the… I think the guy was diving for… I don’t know if it was abalone or some kind of…

Ian: Something. 

Pete: Something. Yeah… But I think his fins and shorts appeared somewhere. 

Ian: Yes. 

Pete: And they… 

Ian: Oops! 

Pete: Yeah. That’s it, so it looks like a great white got him. How common are shark attacks in Australia, dad? 

Ian: Not…

Pete: They’re not something that people should be worried about.

Ian: No. If you’re worried about shark attacks then you would never cross the street.

Pete: If you were giving it equal…

Ian: Because you are a thousand times more likely to be run over by a car than you are to be bitten by a shark.

Pete: Yep. Or at least die in a car accident. Yeah.

Ian: And that’s not even killed by a shark, that’s being bitten by a shark. 

Pete: Yeah, but that’s one of those things. People always freaking out about the animals, right? And I was reading a post… I can’t remember who said this the other day about going to the US… Oh! It was on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Great podcast if you guys don’t know of it, but it was an Australian guy, and he was asked about Australian animals versus American animals. And Joe Rogan’s obviously like, you know, “Australia’s fucked, you’ve got crocs, you got sharks, you got snakes, you got spiders, you got, you know, insects up the wazoo.” And this guy’s a hunter. And he’s like, “Mate, for the last 12 months, I’ve seen two snakes in the wild every single day.”. 

Ian: Oh yeah, exactly.

Pete: Right? So, and then it was funny because he was like, “The thing that’s fucked up is that I come to the US and in the first week I’ve seen 30 rattlesnakes.”

Ian: Yeah!

Pete: And he’s like, “What’s up with that? Like we have deadly snakes in Australia, but you never see them. But in the US, rattlesnakes at least…,” you know, I guess that’s the what? The western part of the continent there in the dry areas are everywhere.

Ian: Yeah. I was on a day trip to… A four-wheel-drive trip down into the Grand Canyon in Arizona a few years ago and the guide, while he was talking to us, gave us the warning about, you know, he said, “In Arizona, everything will prick you, stick you, bite you, sting you, or will make you sick if you eat it.” And we think of Australia as being dangerous in the outdoors, but it really isn’t.

Pete: Yeah. Well, and I’m sure from your experience travelling around Australia, meeting people, doing biology at university as well, I’m sure that the majority of people you know who’ve been bitten by any of those animals probably worked with them or you got too close to them…

Ian: Yep. Yep.

Pete: …whilst working with them.

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: So, for me, one of the guys I know who has been bitten by a Taipan was Ross. I’ve… He’s on the podcast talking about snakes and what to do if you get bitten by them. And he was in, I think Western Australia there and was trying to photograph one and just misjudged how close he was to the animal. And it got his hand. But obviously, you know, he was right there in front of it… He’s a snake expert, too, and he was right in front of it.

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: He got bitten by it, which is, you know, much more common than the average person just walking here in Australia.

Ian: Yeah, I think the average people who get bitten by snakes, and this is sort of a bit of folklore. I don’t know that there’s been a lot of documented studies of it, but I suspect it is true that the majority of people who get bitten by snakes are trying to kill them.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With a shovel or… 

Ian: They’re actually getting too close. They trying to hit them with a stick or hit them with a shovel or do something like that, you know.

Pete: Yeah.

Ian: The snakes… Most snakes that you see are going to be sleeping

Pete: or they’re going to be pissing their butt while they’re running off in the other direction.

Ian: Yeah, because they will have taken off before you get to see them.

Pete: Well, I remember that being… I think it was the You Yangs. Was that where we were when I shat myself?

Ian: No! It was up at the Mount Alexander, yeah, near Bendigo.

Pete: Was it? Okay. So, we were near Bendigo. And I remember… you could tell the story if you want. Do you remember it?

Ian: Oh, I didn’t see the actual event. All I remember is seeing you bolting out of the Bush!

Pete: With my dick out! So, like, yeah, without getting too crass, the story is that I had to really go to the toilet. I was busting to take a piss. And I walked off the track, which is quite common.

Ian: Pete was about 10 years old at the time. Let’s put this into context.

Pete: Yeah. It wasn’t last week. And so, I walked off the track. I sort of scurried a little bit down the mountains. And there were those… I guess the bush here is really dry.

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: You know, sunlight hits the ground. So, a lot of snakes do come out and sunbathe in these areas.

Ian: And, yeah, lots of leaf litter and stuff like that as well. So…

Pete: Lots of rocks. And so, I was getting ready to take a piss. I, you know, pulled the member out and was getting ready. And as I looked down, there was a brown snake at my feet, asleep, just curled up. And as soon as I moved, it lifted its head. But it didn’t have time, I was out of there. And I shat myself, like, I was screaming, like, “There’s a fucking snake!”. And the snakes probably just gone back to sleep. But yeah, that was the closest encounter I think I’ve had apart from catching one up at the farm when I was a little kid.

Ian: Yeah. A baby one.

Pete: That was in winter, it didn’t count. What about funnel webs? Should you be worried about them comparatively with sharks, crocodiles and snakes?

Ian: Yeah, probably. But again, very few people get bitten by them. 

Pete: These are funnel web spiders, guys.

Ian: We don’t have them in Melbourne. 

Pete: They’re in Sydney, right? Well, actually, we do. But they’re Sydney funnel web… We’ve got funnel web spiders here.

Ian: We have… Not in Melbourne. In Victoria we have… yeah, we have a different species of funnel web spider that will…

Pete: I didn’t realise…

Ian: … that the venom will take you a lot longer to kill you than the one in Sydney. But the Sydney funnel web, as it is not officially known, but often called… 

Pete: At least it gives you a warning and its name. Where not to go. Yeah. 

Ian: Yeah. And the look, the big challenge with them is that they are relatively common, but they also live in just backyard gardens.

Pete: Yep.

Ian: You know, they live in… They’ll build their funnels, as they’re called because they’re attack predators. They sit in a funnel web. 

Pete: So, they’ve dug in a little tunnel.

Ian: They build a little tunnel, build a funnel around it, and then sit in it waiting. And when something comes past, they’ll leap out and bite it…

Pete: And pull it back in.

Ian: And pull it back in.

Pete: Yeah.

Ian: So, most people who get bitten by them are out doing gardening. You know, they’ll just be picking up leaf litter or raking over stuff, you know, with their hands and get bitten on their hand. So… 

Pete: I think they’re kind of frightening because they… another part of their biology, especially for the males, is that the males will wander around actively in, I think, the spring season…

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: …maybe the end of winter, spring, looking for females to mate with. And I think for them, they’re kind of in a tumultuous38 situation, too…

Ian: And they’re aggressive and…

Pete: …because quite often they get eaten by the female, right?

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: So, the males will go around and they look for anything that’s a hole or a warm, damp location hoping there’s a female in there. And so, if you leave your shoes outside, they’re likely to go in that and they can get in pools and you can… they can live. They trap the air with the hairs on their on their body.

Ian: On their body.

Pete: And so, they don’t die very quickly when they fall in the pools. If you’re swimming around in the backyard pool, you can touch one.

Ian: But yeah, I… again, I haven’t looked at the statistics, but I don’t… I can’t remember the last time a person in Australia died of a spider bite.

Pete: Yeah.

Ian: There’s lots of occasions of spider bites. But we’re… we’re so good now, the science is so good with the antivenins to… If you get to hospital in time, then, you know, you’re cured fairly quickly.

Pete: Looks like here there’d been no deaths in Australia that have been confirmed from a spider bite since 1979.

Ian: Yeah. There you go.

Pete: So, there you go. What’s that? Almost forty years.

Ian: Forty years. Yeah.

Pete: Yeah, and not since anti-venom was brought in for the red back spider in the funnel web. And I think they’re the only two spiders in Australia that’ve killed people. 

Ian: That are deadly. That are deadly. Yeah.

Pete: But there was a funny story I remember in the news a while back about the redback spider, and these things are everywhere. Like…

Ian: Oh, yeah, you’ll have them in your yard here.

Pete: Yeah. And well, I remember going up to nanna and grandpa’s farm and he had a big arse shed for equipment and cars out in the backyard that’s made out of, what, corrugated iron or whatever it is.

Ian: Yeah. Yeah.

Pete: Huge, you know, metal shed and there used to be hundreds of them around underneath the coping45 under the shed that was holding it up.

Ian: Yep.

Pete: They would be everywhere. But there was a guy in the news last year, who got bitten on the penis twice by the same spider. So, he was a tradie and went to the… he went to the outdoor dunny they had there and there was a spider under… the under the toilet seat that got him. But he went to the hospital. And then next week when he came back, he obviously didn’t think to lift the seat up… 

Ian: Didn’t think! He was a bit slow! A bit slow!

Pete: …and got done again. Yes. So that is a legit story that was in there.

Ian: Well, there’s that old folk song, modern folk song in Australia about the red back on the toilet seat.

Pete: Is there? I don’t think I know it.

Ian: Yeah. Oh, look it up. Don’t ask me to sing it! But, yeah… And that’s a common one because, again, they live in know, dark, damp places…

Pete: Underneath…

Ian: …and outback toilets are a great little spot for them.

Pete: But they’re another one of those animals that you’ll only really see if you go looking for them really. And they’re…

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: For me, I always remembered finding them because I’d be lifting up rocks looking for lizards and skinks and, you know, frogs and stuff at the farm or out in the bush. And every time we lift up a rock and you see those white balls, that you know that they’re the…

Ian: That’s the eggmass. So, there’ll be a big female hanging around.

Pete: …the eggmass, from a big female.

Ian: Yeah. And look, you know, redbacks are… yes, the venom is deadly and they do bite, hence, you know, people have died of redback bites.

Pete: But that’s probably, too, because they don’t know and they just leave it, right?

Ian: Yeah. But they’re… the fangs are very small.

Pete: Yeah.

Ian: Unlike the funnel web where, you know, they’re…

Pete: That’s frightening. They can go through your toenail.

Ian: Yeah, exactly. They’ll go through gardening gloves.

Pete: It’s like a knife on the front of a spider. 

Ian: Whereas… Whereas redbacks, you could have one in the palm of your hand and it couldn’t get through the calluses on your fingers.

Pete: Yeah. Well…

Ian: Put it on the back of your hand and it could. 

Pete: There was a guy online who free-handled a redback when he came to Australia. Coyote Peterson or whatever his name was, the guy who’s like a wildlife YouTuber.

Ian: Yeah.

Pete: And he came out to Australia and free handled one. Not recommending that you do that.

Ian: No! No!

Pete: But yeah. So, I guess, yeah, dangerous animals wise coming to Australia, you shouldn’t really be afraid too much. I’d be more worried about humans. You’re much more likely to be, you know, killed…

Ian: Oh, look, the one dangerous animal in Australia that does kill tourists are crocodiles.

Pete: Well, it’s probably more likely to be dogs, horses, and, you know…

Ian: Oh yeah. But there every year we have one or two tourists that, not necessarily get killed, but get taken by crocodiles. 

Pete: And these are quite often Australian tourists, too, right? 

Ian: Oh, yeah.

Pete: People who just have no idea. They don’t locals…

Ian: That’s right.

Pete: …from that area, they tend to be people who’ve gone north to Queensland or the Northern Territory. 

Ian: And, you know, with the estuarine crocodile or saltwater crocodiles, they live in saltwater and freshwater and they will be up to 100, you know, kilometres or more upstream in some of the large rivers in northern Australia.

Pete: Yep.

Ian: And people go, “It’s hot, it’s humid all times of the year.” And I think, “Oh, yeah, this is safe. I just I can’t see anything. I’ll just go for a swim.”

Pete: “And the water’s clear.” 

Ian: “The water’s clear.” Yeah. 

Pete: Don’t do it. Especially, ask…

Ian: They swim quickly. And don’t camp right beside the… anyway.

Pete: Yeah. Watch Crocodile Dundee. Don’t fill up your water bottle at the edge of the water.

Ian: Yeah.