Hi everyone, I was watching the thread change to snakes.. I live in a vast wilderness & I love snakes, i have studied them closely since I was about 7 years old & used to catch deadly snakes for serum labs. I get lots in my bulb garden & i love seeing them.. Except the huge carpet snakes who snap off my flower spikes sometimes while they bask in the sun... I hate seeing false information continue to spread about one of my favorite creatures... So I want to add, to add that Australian Red Belly snakes are relatively harmless.. They rarely ever bite, they are not a hostile species by any means.. There has only ever been a few recorded deaths in adverse conditions... To state a red belly will kill a dog in 20 minutes, may have happened but is very fanciful as a reference... They are however hemotoxic & clot the blood which is bad for anyone if not treated.. Pressure bandage is required for all toxic Australian snakes, but people rarely make the effort to put one on their dog, so do run the risk of heart failure due to lack of lymphatic movement if poison... Any dog or human treated by pressure bandage will normally be saved in normal cases... A couple of facts to disclaim false statements left on the web & often passed on by word... Snakes can not inter breed because they all have specific sexual organs that only match their own species... We often see false stories about cross breading which is phisicly impossible.. People who kill harmless slow moving red bellies, often get more brown snake move in, which will kill you and your dog.. Red bellies are one of the few natural predators of a brown snake.. Completely amune to browns venom, browns have zero amunity to red belly venom even though they are less venomous... Hope that disclaims some of the false information we see in wickapedias etc now days.. Steven : )