Tropical countries that our grandparents only knew from stories are now
holiday destinations: the savannas in Kenya as well as the last rainforests of
Thailand or the beaches of the Caribbean. As a result, “normal tourists”
come into contact with dangers to which only researchers and adventurers
previously exposed themselves - far too often, today's holidaymakers do not
find out about poisonous animals.
Anyone who studies the documents of the great explorers, whether
Alexander von Humboldt's South America expeditions, Charles Darwin's trips
around the world on the Beagle or David Livingstone's march into the wilderness
of East Africa, will see that the greatest dangers in hot countries in and
outside the tropics do not come from the predators at the top of the food
pyramid.
t is not the great white shark, the Bengal tiger or the Nile crocodile
that cause the most problems in the warm climates, but cobras and kraits,
scorpions and spiders, cone snails and poisonous fish.
Why do animals produce poisons?
In the rainforest, in the deserts, or in the coral reef: poison is part
of nature.
The poison dart frogs of South America store the poison of the ants that
eat them, the desert scorpion of the American Southwest, shorter than a middle
finger, can easily send a person out of the world with a full load of its
poison - it is therefore so strong that it can damage the tank the beetle
penetrates, on which it feeds.
Many vacationers underestimate poisonous animals in the sea: The oceans
are not a hotel swimming pool; In coral reefs in particular, living beings
are in extreme competition with one another, and they have to assert themselve
in order to survive.
Poisons serve both to ward off predators and to hunt down prey. The
more predators and the more competing species there are, the greater the
pressure of natural selection - the basic law of evolution.
In coral reefs as in tropical rainforests: The more species crowd into
ecological niches - and the more interesting these areas are for nature
tourists - the more animals produce poisons, many of which are threatening to
humans.
Defense - not hunting
Accidents with poisonous animals are also very rare in the
tropics. But when it does, the bites, stings, or nettles are at least
painful, often dangerous, and sometimes fatal.
Those who prepare should first assess why poisonous animals harm
people. No animal with a venomous apparatus, be it the Texas rattlesnake,
the blue-ringed octopus or the Colorado toad, ambushes people because it
regards them as prey.
So when such animals bite or stick people, they feel
threatened. They see no escape route and instinctively react by defending
themselves. Some poisonous animals even warn - for example rattlesnakes.
The last hollow skin limbs on the tail create a clattering sound that is
clearly distinguished from the chirping of crickets and other noises made by
small animals on the ground. In evolution, this rattle probably developed
to warn large ungulates such as deer and bison: "Don't step on me."
What to do?
There are some rules of conducts that you should follow in warm
countries to prevent poisoning by animals. Not complying with them would
be like walking through the traffic light when it is red in this country and
wondering if a car hits you.
1) Don't leave food, clothing, or shoes lying around on the
ground. Scorpions, spiders and snakes like to settle in it.
2) If you sleep in the tent: lock the entrance when you leave the tent
or when you are in it. For large tents: make sure that the inner sleeping
tents are closed.
Before you travel, check to see if your tent wall has holes that
scorpions, spiders or snakes could penetrate. The animals feel attracted
to the body heat and therefore like to crawl over to sleepers.
3) Shake off your clothes and shoes before putting them on. Shoes
and jacket pockets are ideal “caves” for scorpions, and when you step into
their shoes, the animals behave in the same way as when someone is harassing
them in their sanctuary: They sting - depending on the species, painful like a
bee, dangerous or for example sometimes fatal in the tiny red Indian scorpion
from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
4) Dispose of leftover food well away from your storage area and stow
your food in odorless plastic boxes: food attracts mice, and mice attracts
snakes.
Most cobras and kraits accidents in India and homes or rattlesnakes in
housing developments in the United States happen because the snakes get close
to people because of the rats and mice that live there.
5) Sleep under a mosquito net, put mosquito screens on windows and
doors. This prevents insects, spiders and scorpions from getting to their
bodies.
Be careful with a beach holiday
The seas are not a swimming pool. While the big sharks cause only a
few fatal accidents worldwide every year, the “deep blue sea” is full of active
or passive poisonous animals: sponges, soft corals, sea squirts and crusty
anemones secrete poisons in order to prevail over competitors in space
(sponges) or to deter predators from them to eat them (anemones).
Cone snails kill their prey with poison arrows. An Australian
species secretes the most potent poison of all living things; Sea snakes
also hunt with poison, as do jellyfish.
Around 250 known fish species are poisonous: some warn potential
predators with conspicuous colors like the lionfish, others camouflage
themselves excellently like the stone fish. The scorpion fish and scorpion
fish are among the most poisonous fish. They have converted their dorsal
fins into poisonous spines, but they also have anal and pelvic spines.
Poisonous octopuses
The blue-ringed octopuses are at home from Indonesia to the Philippines
to New Guinea and Australia. They live in shallow water up to 50 m deep,
preferably on reefs. All species of the genus have a strong nerve poison
that they release with a bite; this poison, tetrodotoxin, can be fatal to
humans.
It leads to paralysis, especially in the chest and diaphragm, in the two
hours after the bite and thus triggers respiratory arrest. Artificial
respiration is critical; if it succeeds, the poison has no after-effects.
Provision in the sea
At the seaside, please note the following:
1) Wear bathing shoes. Many poisonous marine animals lie on the
bottom, camouflage themselves in the color of sand or stones and have poisonous
spines. Stone fish, for example, are very dangerous poisonous
fish; they bear their name because they are drawn like stones and also
overgrown with algae. They live in shallow water, and fin rays associated
with poison glands lie on the dorsal fin.
The weever in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Seas spends the day
buried in the eyes, often near beaches. Its poison contains serotonin and
proteins and causes the release of histamine: Usually the sting point “only”
hurts and swells up a lot; However, those who have an allergic reaction
suffer from dizziness, pass out and can even suffer cardiac arrest. Unconsciousness
alone can mean death by drowning in water.
2) When you snorkel or dive on coral reefs, the basic rule is: don't
touch anything, or if you can't do anything else, look carefully. For
example, off Australia you could grab a blue-ringed octopus or a deadly cone
snail on the reef.
3) When you get in the water, swim as fast as you can, especially if you
cannot see the bottom because the water is too churned. Even if you can
see the ground beneath your feet, you often won't see buried weever or
stingray.
4) Do not touch any marine animals on the beach that you do not know:
The nettle poison from jellyfish also works on dry land, and extremely
poisonous cone snails also shoot their arrows on land.
5) When in the water, avoid gathering jellyfish.
First aid in case of poisoning
1) Try to relax - the more aroused you are, the faster the poison will
spread in your body.
2) If possible, rinse the bite site with clean fresh water. Please
do not suck out the bite area, neither you nor anyone else. In the worst
case, this will poison the person who gets the poison in their mouth.
3) Take pain medication.
4) Consult a doctor immediately who will have the special antiserum
ready for snake venom, for example. Describe the poisonous animal in
question very precisely to the doctor. This is the only ways he can find
the right antiserum - such an antidote is not a children's toy, and people have
already died because they were given the wrong antiserum.
5) If the bite is on the limb, tie off the leg or arm, but only so that
some blood can continue to flow and only if it takes you more than 30 minutes
to see a doctor . Loosen the bandage for 20 seconds every 30 minutes.
6) When being transported, move as little as possible.
Where are poisonous snakes?
Like all cold-blooded reptiles, snakes love warm countries because they
cannot maintain their own body temperature. That is why there only a few
species of snakes in Germany, and only two of them are poisonous - adder and
aspic viper.
The metropolis of poisonous snakes is Australia - 70% of all snakes are
poisonous here, but only about 3000 venomous snake bites occur here per year,
which is probably due to the modern infrastructure and the fact that most
Australians live in cities during the dry and hot outback is almost deserted.
Hundreds of thousand of people are bitten every year in Asia, as well as
in Africa; in the US there are 10,000 bites annually; in Central and South
America the numbers are higher, but probably below 20,000.
So are the most conservative estimates. However, some experts
consider this to be many times too low; a study in India found 46,000
fatalities a year instead of the 2000 officially stated. In large parts of
Africa, Asia and South America, most of the victims are rural people -
woodworkers who are bitten by lance vipers in Costa Rica, goatherds who are
victim of a puff adder in Tanzania or rice farmers in Bengal whose lives are
killed by a cobra. These peoples do not appear in official statistics
because no hospital records when they die in their village.
For example, the doctor David Warrel of the University of Oxford says:
"In the 21st century the snakebite is the most neglected tropical
disease." The WHO writes of 5 million snakebites annually - 125,000 of
them are fatal and 300,000 with a permanent disability.
The Antarctic, some islands in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and
Caribbean, as well as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, New Caledonia, New Zealand,
Hawaii and Madagascar are free of venomous snakes.
