Most Venomous Creature
Posted on September 19th, 2006by Michael Gray in Ideas, Social Networks
Tangentially Related Search Posting Ahead …
So for my oldest daughters school they have a weekly assignment to teach them how to search for things on the internet. Last weeks question “what is the most venomous creature“. After doing initial research I my own I sent her back with a clarification question was it most poisonous or most venomous, and it was most venomous. So after checking before hand and then guiding her on the way we reached the answer of “sea wasp” or “box jellyfish” (same animal). Yesterday my daughter informed me the answer was poison tree frog. So I printed out and highlighted the following pages
California Academy of Sciences - Venoms: Striking Beauties
Poison vs. Venom
These terms are often used interchangeably, but they actually have very different meanings. It is the delivery method that distinguishes one from the other. Poison is absorbed or ingested; a poisonous animal can only deliver toxic chemicals if another animal touches or eats it. Venom, on the other hand, is always injected.
California Academy of Sciences - Venoms: Striking Beauties
Poison Dart Frog Dendrobates azureus
These frogs secrete a toxic substance from their skin, causing sickness or even death to animals that touch or eat them. But the frogs have no way to inject their toxins: they’re poisonous, not venomous.
and
Sea Wasp - Box Jelly - Marine Stinger
But what we’re talking about here are the venomous creatures; those whose bodies manufacture toxins that can be rubbed off, ingested (swallowed), or injected into another, causing severe illness or death. Just to name a few, there’s the poison dart frogs of the Costa Rican jungles, stonefish, cone shells, the black mamba snake, and even a tiny octopus that lives in tropical waters. When creatures are rated for the “deadliness factor” there’s a couple of measures that are taken into account:
1) How many people an ounce of the creature’s venom can kill
2) How long it takes you to die from the venom after being bitten, stung, or stuck
In both cases the grand prize winner and world-record holder is the creature known
as the sea wasp, or marine stinger. The name sea wasp is misleading because the creature isn’t actually a wasp or insect at all.
and lastly from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park whom I think we can all agree is is an authorititive trusted website we get
Animal Records - National Zoo| FONZ
Most Venomous Animal
A single sea wasp (a kind of jellyfish with 60 tentacles, each 15 feet long) has enough venom to kill 60 adult humans.
The response was “my research came from the National Geographic Poison Control Center” (who curiously doesn’t have any information online about venomous animals) and she was looking for creature not an animal.
I might be willing to concede that in some narrow interpretation a creature is not an animal, although you would have to provide some good verifiable evidence, however poison is clearly different from venom and the frog is poisonous not venomous, so if we’re going to split hairs on definitions the frog doesn’t make the cut either.
Some of you say hay Gray just give in it’s not worth it, to you I say do you want your teacher spreading the wrong information to your children?
Ok for those of you who stuck through, here’s the gold at the end of the rainbow, Google indexed my delicious bookmarks for ["most venomous animal"] think you might be able to find a use for that 
Update
So we got a call tonight from the teacher who said she called the poison center and they explained the difference between venomous and poisonous to her and she admit she was wrong and would tell the class tomorrow. Cool Beans! There is some value in paying high taxes and having all the schools in your district certified as blue ribbon schools of excellence!
Popularity: 35% [?]
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September 19th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Way to go, Graywolf, you’ve just guaranteed that your daughter’s seat will get reassigned next to the smelly kid’s.
In all seriousness, I agree with you. It may seem petty, but it’s pretty frustrating to have a teacher who doesn’t admit his mistakes or is willing to see other points of view.
September 19th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Yea sometimes I just can’t control myself I have real authority issues. It’s also this type of behavior that’s irritated more than a few of my bosses on occasion.
September 19th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
My daughter would have just rolled her eyes and then carried on as normal….
September 19th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
define:creature
September 20th, 2006 at 9:15 am
Hey G-Dub, nice job getting the delicious link indexed…FYI, that link is throwing an error for me:
XML Parsing Error: junk after document element
Location: http://delicious.wolf-howl.com/feed/
Line Number 456, Column 1:
September 21st, 2006 at 9:07 pm
Since the original assignment was to research via the internet, it is good to see that the SEO pro beat the biology teacher =D
March 21st, 2007 at 6:39 pm
A strong candidate that I know of is the “Afrur” an insect related to the bedbug found only in the Sinai Desert. Afrur in hebrew means dirt and this insect covers itself with sand for camoflouge. Discovered in 1967 after numerous Isreali soldiers were found dead on bivouac with an unknown toxin in the their blood, the Afrur is so unknown I doubt that anyone can find any info about it on the web unless you can read hebrew @ Jerusalem University. Experiments showed that mice injected with Saw-scaled Viper venom live for a minute or a little longer, the Afrur kills a mouse in 3 seconds! Venomologists say that the Afrur makes the viper’s bite seem like a mosquito bite in comparison! The venom is injected through a probosis and its venom gland is a third of its body at least. So I challenge anyone who can find any info on this insect and find a more toxic creature than the Afrur.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:59 am
Holotrichius innesi is the insect also known as “Afrur”. In agreement with Tony, this just very well be the nasty of nasties.
September 9th, 2007 at 11:03 am
dudes… i dont understand one thing..
according to the aforesaid definitions,
poisonous ~ingestion …
venoumous ~ingestion …injection.
so does this mean venomous are poisonous but poisonous are’t venomous??.
thx ..