Horses more deadly than Australian snakes, sharks and spiders

Horses are more deadly than all of Australia’s most venomous creatures put together, a new study has found.

Riding accidents

Researchers at Melbourne University looked at hospital admissions data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as well as Australian coronial records.

Between 2000 and 2013 bees and wasps killed 27 people and the same number died from snake bites. However, 74 Australians died after falling off a horse, or being trampled by one.

Spiders were not responsible for any deaths during that time, although nearly 12,000 were hospitalised by arachnid bites.

“The last death recorded on this dataset was in 1980, just before funnel web spider anti-venom came along, so before that there was no treatment for the venom, since then people have been treated very successfully,” said Dr Ronelle Welton who led the study.

Shark attacks

Horses also killed more people than sharks, even though shark attacks regularly make the headlines in Australia.

“I looked at the same database, we have 26 deaths in the same period from sharks and I thought that was really interesting — 19 deaths from crocodiles, and 74 deaths from horses,” said Welton.

“I was expecting it to be more, with the funding and the awareness that’s put into sharks, I actually thought it would be higher.”