Monday, September 19, 2011

We're off!

Welcome to my blog everyone!

Some of you may be curious about the title of this blog. While looking up the various animals in Australia that will kill me, I came upon an interesting bit of information.  Not only does Australia have venomous snakes, spiders, mammals, and gastropods, they also have venomous trees. Enter the trees in the genus Dendrocnide.  Turns out that the trees in this genus are covered in fine hairs made of silica.  These hairs are also coated in a potent neurotoxin.  When you brush against these trees these small glass hairs penetrate under your skin and release their toxin.  This can result in pain lasting up to months, and there have been stories of it causing death.

"So just avoid touching the trees," you might say.  But not even that is a surefire way of avoiding the sting. If you stay among the trees for an extended period of time (say, an hour), you run the risk of breathing in the hairs that are shed into the air, leading to massive reactions in your lungs. Fabulous.

So which us luck on our trip to Australia, which hates people so much that even the trees try to kill you.

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