The common death adder is ‘phoning it in’
Bec Crew
Bec Crew
The common death adder is one of Australia’s most infamous snakes. Equipped with a potent neurotoxin and one of the fastest strikes in the world, it can bite its prey in less than 0.15 seconds.
With all of that tucked up your sleeve, you can’t blame the death adder for just phoning it in a little.
The common death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus) is found in every mainland state of Australia, particularly along the south and east coast. They live mostly in woodlands and grasslands – anywhere that gives them a good amount of natural cover.
Oddly enough, they’re not actually adders. They belong to a large group of snakes called the elapids (which includes taipans, cobras, mambas and sea snakes) known for having permanently erect fangs at the front of their mouth. ‘True’ adders belong to another large group, the vipers. It’s been suggested that when the European colonists first laid eyes on the common death adder, they named it so because it resembled the way the adders back home looked and behaved.
Of the almost 4,000 species of snakes in the world, many of them are active hunters, meaning they move around actively in search of prey. The taipan, tiger snake, eastern brown snake and red-bellied black snake are all active hunters.
But some snakes prefer to lie in wait.
Perfectly camouflaged among the leaf litter, the death adder becomes a living trap. Twitching the tip of its tail like a struggling worm, it baits lizards, frogs, birds and other prey to come to it. When they get close enough, a lightning-fast strike is all it takes to incapacitate its victim. The death adder barely needs to move an inch. Which honestly is just really chill, and you’ve got to respect that.
It’s thought that this is why death adder bites on humans are typically only accidents, not an act of aggression. A death adder will be minding its own business, camouflaging and waiting for prey to turn up, and an unwitting human will tread on it, triggering a defensive response.
Most reported adder bites have been to the hand or arm, with slightly lower numbers to the foot and much lower numbers to other parts of the body, which suggests that they really only go in for a chomp when a person has stepped on or near them and picked them up. And definitely don’t do that – death adder bites can be devastating if not treated. Before the introduction of antivenom, about 60 per cent of bites to humans were fatal.
Fortunately, the antivenom is readily available, and now arguably even more so with the discovery of an exceedingly rare three-fanged death adder at the Australian Reptile Park in Somersby, New South Wales, earlier this year. The snake produces “massive yields” of venom from all three fangs, Billy Collett, park manager at the Australian Reptile Park, told LiveScience in March. Collett said it’s not clear whether the snake produces more venom because it has three fangs or because it’s just a high-yield individual, but they’ve calculated that it produces roughly double the venom of its two-fanged peers.
