Just as slow and steady won the race between the tortoise and the hare, slow and deadly can also outwit the unwary. Many are ambush hunters, creatures whose feeding strategy is based entirely on doing nothing until a meal appears in front of it.
We humans aren’t actually targets, and attacks are mostly just responses to a perceived threat, but that probably won’t help you much when you’re doubled up in a pain because some frequently other-worldly, possibly unseen beast has just injected you with a dose of venom strong enough to make an elephant cry.
8 slow animals that can still kill
Reef stonefish
Half-resembling a strange lumpy fruit that has goggly eyes and a grumpy upturned mouth, the reef stonefish is one of those creatures where it is temping to ask, “What hath God wrought?” It would be even more tempting to ask this should you tread on one because one or two of its 13 sharp dorsal spines will pierce even the toughest of boots and go into your foot, causing immediate severe pain, shock and nausea.
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Well, they are the most venomous fish on the planet. Immerse the affected area in water 45˚C – or as hot as you can bear – and seek medical care, but don’t panic too much as the envenomation is rarely fatal. And watch where you’re putting your foot next time.
Slow loris
It might look cute and harmless, with nothing more dangerous than an endearing gaze that makes you want to give the slow loris a good cuddle, but that would’t be a good idea.
Instead, keep an eye out for any loris – a primate in the same taxonomic group as lemurs, bushbabies and tarsiers – that lifts its arm up and starts licking the inside just above the elbow because it’s combining the toxin in its brachial gland with saliva and preparing to bite you.
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The venom is thought to have the same affect on humans as an allergic reaction to cats. In South-east Asia, to which slow lorises are native, people frequently keep them as pets, but for obvious reasons, this isn’t good for either.
Cottonmouth
There are plenty of deadly snakes in the world, and most of them are most likely to bite you because of an unintended encounter, but the cottonmouth, a species of pit adder also called the water moccasin because it loves freshwater habitats, has a particular trick that places it in the slow and deadly category.
When threatened, it doesn’t slither off, but stands its ground and flashes the white insides of its mouth. And a bite can be fatal – a man died after being bitten on both his legs while wading across a river in Missouri. One study found a cottonmouth was more likely to be aggressive if it was already stressed, so watch out for any looking especially grumpy.
Portuguese man o’war
Drifting with the winds and currents, its pink, frilly sail often all you can see of it, the Portuguese man o’ war is surely the closest thing to an alien any of us are likely to encounter in our lives.
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For a start it’s not one animal, it’s four (all genetically identical) living as a colony, with each individual performing a particular function such as hunting, digestion or reproduction. And then there are those long tentacles trailing behind its body for up to an incredible 50 metres – the length of a full-size Olympic swimming pool! – like a badass foe of Dr Who’s. Though a sting is painful and results in burning, swelling and redness, it’s unlikely to be fatal.
Electric eel
Understandably, we marvel at a species whose ancestors first acquired the ability to generate electric fields an estimated 100 million years ago given that Alessandro Volta only invented the first battery in 1800.
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We were beaten by 100 million years, give or take, to one of the most important practical inventions of the modern era – by a fish. For people living in the Amazon Basin, however, there are other things to worry about, not least getting into a tangle with one of these, technically, knifefishes (they’re not true eels). Some human deaths have been recorded, but the true scale of the problem is not properly understood.
Komodo dragon
There are numerous stories of fatal and near-fatal encounters between humans and Komodo dragons, but none of them involve the latter moving at any great pace. Indeed, none of them involve the latter really moving at all.
- It has iron-coated razor-sharp teeth, weighs the same as a beer keg and delivers its deadly venom by raking its teeth through its prey’s flesh
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Somehow, despite a fearsome reputation and a name that invokes images of scaly reptiles that can breathe fire and fly, people sometimes allow one of these monsters to get so close they can chomp down on a leg or other part of their anatomy without much effort.
One man on the island of Rinca (along with Komodo, the main stronghold for the species) had just settled down at his desk when he noticed a dragon lying at his feet like a faithful dog. The resulting bite took six months to heal, but plenty of people have lost their lives.
Cone snail
Snails are so slow we make jokes about them but there’s nothing funny about the cone snail. There are multiple species, but one is known as the cigarette snail, because it’s said if you get stung by one, you have time for one last smoke before you die – the venom is so strong scientists say one animal could kill 700 people.
If a sting is left untreated, you might have about five hours of pain, sweating, paralysis, necrosis, coma and – presumably finally – respiratory failure. Cone snails are a marine animal and more than half of all species are found across a vast area of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Like all good, slow-coaches, they’re ambush hunters, and they will only inject a potentially lethal dose of poison into your foot if you tread on one by mistake.
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