A nasty-looking, dedicated killing machine.....to be respected as is any of God’s creatures for sure, but not wanted near the stoat cave!
I saw a TV program on Australia’s snakes once, and it explained that the reason why so very many ultra-poisonous and deadly snakes exist in Australia is due to the climate, the terrain and the dispersal of available food.
Apparently, food for snakes has historically been so hard to come by that the snakes carrying the most lethal poisons were the ones that survived, because they were the only ones who were able to be assured of not having their dinner run away.
As a result, the snakes with minimal lethality tended to die off because their dinner was able to escape and the ones with the most lethal killing power survived.
Apparently, this is not such a pronounced concern in snake habitats on other continents because snake food is more plentiful, and so species were weeded out for different reasons.