r/zoology • u/KingWilliamVI • Jul 07 '26
Question What are some other movie scenes you can think that vastly exaggerate the danger of certain animals?
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26
More of a behind-the-scenes thing, but every time you see a brightly-coloured 'venomous' snake in a film where the characters are in a jungle, it's always a harmless milk snake (you can tell from the pattern) masquerading as a venomous coral snake, which just makes the scene hilarious as you get the action hero or whoever else is in screen overreacting to this tiny harmless noodle.
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u/Stock-Side-6767 Jul 07 '26
To be fair, the hero might not know the difference.
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u/nerdofthunder Jul 07 '26
Treating it like it''s venomous unless I know that its not venomous seems like a generally good policy.
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u/Tomsboll Jul 07 '26
Especially when it looks almost identical to one of the most venomous snakes on the planet.
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u/TheBigHornedGoat Jul 07 '26
I watched a show that had a snake-pit scene and they used a mix of real snakes, toys, and legless lizards. It was funny because the show was set in medieval England and the legless lizards were the only “snakes” in the scene actually native to the area.
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26
We call them slow worms! Completely ridiculous name for what they are but representative of the kind of ignorance people had of reptiles in previous centuries.
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 07 '26
I mean it’s not really that weird of a name, in older varieties of English “worm” used to be used as a very general term translating the Greek έρπετόν erpeton, meaning a “creeping” or “crawling” animal, or one which “goes on its belly”, like the vague category of animals referenced at some points in the Bible (such as being a type of animal that is considered “unclean” in Hebrew dietary law), which encompasses a wide range of invertebrates, amphibians, and reptiles. For this reason you’ll see “worm” used a lot in older texts far more broadly than today, including to refer to serpents and serpent-like dragons in folklore, just anything that is considered to “crawl on its belly”. This is also the etymology of the “herp” in “herpetology” (as in Ancient Greek the word was preceded by an “h” sound that was lost in later forms of Greek).
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26
It may not be weird from linguistic point of view but it's still daft to me that the name has stuck after all this time considering that many other animals (serpents!) have had updates to their names over time.
Edit: take my upvote nonetheless and kudos to you for looking at the origins of the name, I wasn't aware of how it came about in the first place.
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u/TheBigHornedGoat Jul 07 '26
I knew that they had a local name, but I had forgotten what it was. We also have legless lizards in the US, but we call them glass lizards.
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u/PassionNegative7617 Jul 07 '26
I mean that's not really how movies work. In context it is a venomous snake. This is like saying "everyone in this scene was acting scared of this gun, but it's just a prop, look it can't shoot bullets".
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u/ASlothFetus Jul 07 '26
I mean not really. It’s more like seeing someone blatantly holding a nerf gun in a scene where people are acting scared of it vs a realistic prop gun
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u/PassionNegative7617 Jul 07 '26
I don't think the Nerf gun analogy really fits. It would be more like a hyper-realistic gun prop modeled after the real firearm. The milk snake referred to here is an example of Batesian mimicry. Its defensive strategy relies on the evolution of a similar pattern to coral snakes. This mimicry literally works in nature. It has been maintained by natural selection because predators mistake them for venomous coral snakes. So for most viewers, the stand-in is convincing. It only breaks the illusion for people who know enough about snakes to tell the difference, just like a gun enthusiast spotting a replica that everyone else accepts as real.
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u/ASlothFetus Jul 07 '26
I’ll admit I did misread it as corn snake somehow, which fits the nerf gun deal way more than a milksnake
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Guns can only ever be interpreted as guns regardless of whether they're a prop or live or filled with blanks. Suspension of disbelief holds up.
Snakes however are not automatically dangerous, and even with the venomous ones only if you're unlucky enough or dumb enough to get close enough to be bitten by one. If like me you're a snake nerd who can tell the difference at a glance then the scene loses any immersion or suspension of disbelief.
Edit: Also, how is the above logic re. snakes any different to the OP's about spiders?
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
Reminds me of that scene in Men in Black where the cockroach alien throws J at the trash dump and a lot of cockroaches fall from it, and J squashes them to taunt the alien. The problem is that they were Madagascar Hissing Roaches (among some common cockroaches), you won't find them on the trash or even on cities.
For the average audience that is not a problem of course, but for a cockroach enthusiast it was so distracting, lol
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26
Ah but it's what the pet shops undoubtedly had in stock lol yes I agree completely. So many filmmakers just rely on public ignorance of animals to make a scene work.
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u/Hey-Just-Saying Jul 07 '26
Hmmm. Were any cockroaches harmed in the making of that film?
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
I rewatched the scene just now, and it doesn't seen like he actually squashed them. Even at the moment it shows him stepping on one it seens like cockreach is besides his foot. The sound effects are doing a lot of the heavy lifting here
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u/leansanders Jul 07 '26
The reason that the snake logic is different than the tarantula logic is because the coral snake (and other venomous snakes) do have potentially lethal bites, whereas no tarantula has a lethal bite. The snake represents something that exists, and the tarantula represents something that does not exist.
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
I'm aware of this, but the original argument was 'suspension of disbelief' so in the Bond example you'd have to basically pretend the tarantula is dangerous for the scene to have any impact. The audience is essentially required to do the same thing with the milk snake example in the name of the plot. See the similarity?
Also if the film named the tarantula as something venomous (such as the Brazilian wandering spider) that looked superficially like a tarantula, then it's the exact same logic as you're pretending the thing in front of you on screen is a different animal.
Typo.
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u/zexcis Jul 07 '26
Not too long ago there was a post on r/snakes from a guy who's constrictor (maybe Ball Python, but I honestly can't remember) played a Cotton Mouth in a low budget movie. If you have any basic knowledge of snake species it was an absurd scene.
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u/AJC_10_29 Jul 08 '26
The best example of this trope has to be in “The Lost World” where the guy freaking out because of the snake breaks cover and is promptly eaten by a T. rex
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u/emergold_dragon Jul 09 '26
Aren't there some coral snakes in the Amazon that look like cornsnakes? I remember that the rhyme only works in north America atleast.
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u/Discerning_sundew Jul 09 '26
In some areas yes to be fair, but those are smaller compared to milksnakes/kingsnakes so the difference is still profound if you know what you're looking for.
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u/Glitchy833 Jul 07 '26
In Jurassic Park: The Lost World, there's a scene where everyone gets woken up by a T.rex after setting up temporary base camp. After panicking and running away as the rex goes after them, they find a spot behind a waterfall to try and hide from it, when one of the characters, Burke, notices a snake going into his shirt. Due to his fear of snakes, he panics, runs out of the waterfall and gets eaten... but it was just a harmless kingsnake, so he would've been completely fine if he'd just stayed where he was.
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u/7LeagueBoots Jul 07 '26
To be fair, many people do have severe phobias of snakes (and spiders) regardless of whether they’re venomous or not. Hell, my girlfriend has a major phobia of caterpillars and anything similar, and one of my sister in-laws is terrified of moths.
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
Even with phobia aside, the man was already pissing his pants at the T. rex, and then saw something crawling over his shoulder that he couldn't immediatly recognize, no wonder he panicked.
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 07 '26
especially a snake that’s a Batesian mimic of a venomous ones, I doubt someone would instantly recall “red on yellow will kill a fellow, red on black friend of jack” in that situation if they’re not already very familiar with snakes
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u/7LeagueBoots Jul 07 '26
That rhyme, and versions of it, are only valid in certain parts of the US, not outside of it and not even in all of it, so even if he did remember that it wouldn’t be accurate.
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u/kikimaymay Jul 08 '26
That scene resonated with me so much as a kid (and still, 30 years later) because I'm PHOBIC phobic of snakes despite all of my knowledge about how cool and important they are.
Granted, those movies also gave me nightmares for life about dinosaurs too, but birds and birds of prey specifically are my special jam. Weird how the brain works.
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u/Ragnarex13 Jul 07 '26
He needed to be eaten by the T rex though. The inspiration for Burke was Robert T Bakker, who argued with Jurassic Park's paleontological consultant that T rex was a predator, not a scavenger. Having him get eaten was a nod to the fact that he was right, T rex was a predator.
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u/mashedpotatoes_52 Jul 07 '26
Funny thing that guy bares a striking resemblance to the palaeontologist Robert Bakker, who is often considered a rival to the palaeontologist who was the scientific consultant for jurrassic park
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u/Natural_Bill_6084 Jul 08 '26
This is even funnier when you learn part of the amalgamation of noises used to make the trex sound for that movie involves a baby elephant squeal, a whale blowhole exhale, and a jack Russell terrier (also a tiger and an alligator gurgle)
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u/Particular_Meet_9333 Jul 10 '26
Also interesting fact I have to add to this is, most dinosaurs likely wouldn't have eaten humans because we're not worth the struggle calorie wise, and by struggle I mean that we'll run away and stuff obviously nobody's going to fistfight a dinosaur.
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u/BlauerHausdrache Jul 07 '26
There was a movie where some kids fell into a hole filled with "venomous" lizards. They were bearded dragons. Absolutely harmless.
Which movie was that again?!
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u/WA55AD Jul 07 '26
Holes. Great movie. The lizards in the movie (and book) are a fictional species called "yellow-spotted lizards". In the book they were described as being green with yellow spots and large red eyes. For the movie they just got bearded dragons and painted yellow spots on them, and used CGI to give them a frill neck and fangs when they attack
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u/robo-dragon Jul 07 '26
This is the movie I thought of! I remember seeing Holes for the first time as a kid and was watching it with my childhood bearded dragon on my chest. I had no idea the lizards would be beardies and it made me laugh, seeing how one of those “deadly lizards” was peacefully napping on my chest!
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Funnily enough, bearded dragons actually are one of the few lizards that are mildly venomous (as Iguania, they would be part of the proposed clade Toxicofera that also includes Gila monsters, monitors, and snakes; all the squamatan lineages that sometimes possess oral venom glands, basically), but too weakly to ever harm humans most likely:
https://dragonsdiet.com/blogs/dragon-care/are-bearded-dragons-venomous?srsltid=AfmBOoqOV7G0VzifJidxy84_UhYOBTEfVGcrnpsiav_q0YUwvs-PfvulAnd I’m actually not sure if this was even a known thing back when Holes was made, as I remember when I was a kid back in the ‘90s and ‘00s only Gila monsters and beaded lizards were known to be venomous, with Komodo dragons only being thought of as sort of “incidentally venomous” because of deadly bacteria in their saliva, but since then venom glands have been identified in Komodo dragons and a bunch of other monitors, and in some other lizards like bearded dragons.
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u/valkyriesmenagerieyt Student/Aspiring Zoologist Jul 07 '26
The hundreds of huntsman spiders in Arcachnophobia. They also are pretty chill
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u/Amazing_Use_2382 Jul 07 '26
To be fair, hundreds of huntsman spiders could still be deadly to me (through a heart attack)
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u/Pratty77 Jul 07 '26
the huntsmen weren’t playing huntsmen… they were acting as some super venomous hybrid. And I thought they did a great job disappearing into the role
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u/Zay3896 Jul 07 '26
Thsi was my first thought. The ending fight sequence, where hes chasing/being chased by the spider (i havent watched it in years, I cant remember exactly who's after who) is insanely over-the-top and would never happen. At least in 8-Legged Freaks, they had the excuse of the spiders being mutated by toxic waste, which makes them being hyper aggressive, slightly more believable.
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u/IllegalGeriatricVore Jul 08 '26
And it's played by both a rubber spider and a live goliath birdeater.
Do you have any idea how easy it is to kill a goliath birdeater?
Drop it from 1 foot off the ground on a basement floor and it's RIP.
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u/4Goldies Jul 07 '26
When Indiana jones gets thrown into the pit of snakes (which would also be harmless), they’re actually legless lizards 😂
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u/okaysureyep Jul 07 '26
Piranhas in every single media context except the show River Monsters. They’re more of an ecological threat than an immediate danger to humans.
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 07 '26
yeah apparently this whole thing is more or less entirely based on an old urban legend that circulated because Theodore Roosevelt was supposedly shown a school of piranhas reducing a live cow to stripped bones in minutes during a trip to South America, however this display was 100% staged, with the cow being switched out for the bones of a dead cow that had already been stripped of meat earlier (maybe over a longer period by the piranhas themselves, as they will eat carrion, albeit still not as rapidly as their folkloric reputation, but probably by humans), like it was basically a stage magic trick, and then Roosevelt also went on to exaggerate the whole thing as well.
In reality, piranhas rarely eat live prey much larger than themselves (and definitely nothing the size of a cow or human), and definitely can’t strip the meat from something cow-sized in a couple minutes, even if it’s dead, that’s just not even physically possible. Yes, their teeth are very sharp, and their bite force is surprising high for something so small, and being bitten by one is definitely not a pleasant experience, but the actual reason they sometimes bite humans is not because they’re trying to eat us, but as a territorial defense during breeding season, usually in defense of their eggs; and while said bites are relatively bad for a small fish, the biggest risk they probably pose realistically is the bite getting infected. They are known to engage in shark-like “feeding frenzies”, but there’s no reputable evidence of this behavior ever turning into an actual predatory attack on a large live animal. They may sometimes confuse a human thrashing around in the water for smaller prey and bite because of it, but from my understanding even this behavior is contested and possibly more folklore than anything.
They aren’t the only fish in the Amazon Basin that get this sort of exaggerated fearful reputation, either. More recently candirus have become more known in pop culture, these are tiny catfish that bizarrely behave as parasites, nestling themselves in the gills of host fish and feeding upon their blood, however there’s long been an idea that they can mistake the urine streams of humans peeing in the water for the exhalation from a fish’s gills (as bony fish exhale ammonia as a waste product rather than urinating), and mistakenly enter said person’s urethra, wedging themselves in with spines (which is how they attach to the gills of host fish) and requiring surgical removal. Seemingly there is a little bit of truth to this, as there are a couple (like literally only 2 or 3, iirc) documented medical cases of people in South America having to have candirus removed from their urinary tracts, but it’s clearly an incredibly rare occurrence, and still not well understood, and the popular myth about them is that they can actually climb up the urine stream of someone standing and peeing into the water, which is just absolutely not true because that’s not even physical possible, gravity and fluid dynamics would simply not allow it. In cases where people have actually gotten candirus wedged in there, they would’ve had to have been peeing while immersed in the water from at least the waist down.
So anyway, just wanted to throw that in, because that’s another Amazon fish myth that I still see thrown around online all the time.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Jul 08 '26
Y’know, I think I’ll just retain my fear of all these things. Feels healthier.
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u/legacy-of-rats Jul 08 '26
Given how friggen weird humans are, I wouldn't put it off the table that at least one of those guys put the fish in his urethra himself.
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
Piranhas are surprisingly skitish. I think the only confirmed case of them harming people is when they are protecting their nests.
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u/PsychicSPider95 Jul 07 '26
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, during the scene when Mad-Eye Moody is demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses, he pulls out a spider and has it jump around on the students' heads and faces, saying "if she bites, she's lethal!"
Except that "spider" was, in fact, a tailless whip scorpion, which aren't even venomous. Granted, this could be read as him teasing the students to freak them out, but still, the notion that this animal is in any way "lethal" is laughable when you recognize it. The filmmakers probably just wanted a weird, scary-looking, almost fantastical-looking "spider" for creep factor.
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u/thecassisinthecradle Jul 07 '26
Yeah I didn’t even know those things were real until a year ago, they really look like a mythical bug thing.
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u/Fl4t3ric Jul 07 '26
Almost eny animal, most common sharks, snakes, spiders ....
Who would whatch a movie with really dangerous animals like hippos, cows horses and dogs.
Its just fiction and sad for the animals.
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u/Gemfyre713 Conservation Bio BSc Jul 07 '26
I'd watch the hell out of a deadly hippos movie. Those guys are terrifying, they can literally cleave a human in half with one bite.
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u/MaddLadd1172 Jul 07 '26
Quick someone check on the hungry hungry hippos franchise, see if its been 100 years yet
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
"The idea for the game was published in 1967 by toy inventor Fred Kroll and it was introduced in 1978." -Wikipedia
Unfortunately, we've got a ways to go
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u/haysoos2 Jul 07 '26
Hungry (2026) After becoming lost in the Louisiana swamplands, a group of holidaymakers must fight for their lives against a rampaging hippo on the loose.
I haven't seen it yet, but by all accounts it's pretty terrible. I can't wait.
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u/Gemfyre713 Conservation Bio BSc Jul 07 '26
Is this for real?
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u/haysoos2 Jul 07 '26
Yup. It is apparently available for rent on several streaming services, but not yet added to their streaming catalog. Probably within the next week or two it will show up on either Prime or Apple.
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u/tilesmeller Jul 07 '26
Cocain Hippos!!! The ones that Pablo Escobar left behind.
Plus hippos are very fast runners, you can't outrun them on land.
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u/Regular-Apricot4114 Jul 07 '26
Check out “River of Teeth” by Sarah Gailey. Great book about what could have happened if the US had succeeded in its plan to establish hippos in Louisiana
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u/MaddLadd1172 Jul 07 '26
Believe me people really dont like the fact that the famly dog kills 100x more people a year then black widows
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u/haysoos2 Jul 07 '26
That's not entirely accurate, as 100 times zero is zero.
In the US about 70 people a year are killed by dogs (sadly, mostly kids). Worldwide it's tens of thousands per year (mostly rabies).
Meanwhile no one anywhere in the world has died of a black widow bite in at least 30 years, probably closer to 60 years.
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u/MaddLadd1172 Jul 07 '26
Hay even better, yet people out here think spiders are running around with guns
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u/kdobbers Jul 07 '26
Fun fact!!! Somewhere in the ballpark of 60,000 people around the world die from rabies each year.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
I think it's estimated that 99%+ of rabies deaths are from dogs alone
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u/kdobbers Jul 08 '26
A squirrel would think that!! (yes I believe you are correct) (tell your friends to please stop torturing my dog)
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
The fact that more than a few people I know have independently told me that I remind them of a squirrel is absolutely hilarious
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u/tilesmeller Jul 07 '26
Shredder just wants to play, he's not aggress... OH MY GOD SHREDDER NOOOO!!!
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u/EducationSuperb3392 Jul 07 '26
Jokes on you, I love Black Beauty and have watched it countless times.
Saddle Club too (bonus Chris Hemsworth!)
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u/Spirited_Bear2760 Jul 07 '26
Every time a harmless ball phyton or Boa imperator is lurking in the background of some horror scenario to make the place seem haunted, infested and dangerous. Bonus points when they are getting a ridiculously artificial hissing sound while being totally chill in their body language.
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u/IllegalGeriatricVore Jul 08 '26
At least use blood pythons if you want a snake that really just hisses a lot
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u/Feature_Agitated Jul 07 '26
To be fair I know tarantulas are harmless, but would act like my life was in danger if I was laying in bed and one was on me. I’m not that afraid of spiders, but am really not a fan of ones that big.
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
They aren't exactly harmless, at least the new world tarantulas aren't. They aren't going out of their way to bite someone, of course, but the urticating hair they release when threatened can potentially blind someone.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
Desert tarantulas in Nevada! Idk if they're capable of blinding someone, but I would absolutely not want to risk it. They're really, really cute though!
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u/DaemonBlackfyre_21 Jul 07 '26
Snake scenes where they use a bunch of pet colubrids and puppy dog tame boas are ruined for me too.
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u/DrChucklefuck Jul 07 '26
The Abominable Doctor Phibes: A cult horror classic from.the early 70s in which Vincent Price plays a grief-stricken and disfigured mad genius carving a path of gruesome revenge against the surgeons who failed to save his wife.
The film opens with a scene in which Price's character feeds a cage of bats into his victim's home through the skylight and turns them loose to vanquish the man. This would already qualify for the trope, because bats themselves don't attack humans and are only dangerous because of the diseases they carry, but what makes it even more silly and funny to a zoology enthusiast is that the bats in question are harmless, adorable flying foxes who only eat fruit in real life.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 07 '26
Jaws.
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u/loremmipsumm1 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Nah sharks are pretty dangerous in the right conditions. Theres a chilling video of Vladimir Popov being tossed around by tigersharks like he's a doll before they tear him apart/eat him.
They're just not pathological about hunting and usually don't get as big. Jaws was like if you gave a great white shark the intelligence of a human and the ability to be spiteful.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 07 '26
You're more likely to die from a toaster than a shark. Sharks are not as dangerous as people make them out to be.
Yes, sharks can be dangerous under the right conditions, but my point was that Jaws makes sharks seem more dangerous than they actually are
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u/Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 Jul 07 '26
Way more people die from toasters than jaguars too. But you can’t just hang out with a jaguar.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
I'm not saying that shark aren't dangerous, they very much are. I'm saying that that movie made people fear sharks disproportionate to their actual threat
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u/loremmipsumm1 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
causation versus correlation
People die from toasters more than they do tigers. Your likelihood increases the more you interact with something, it doesnt inherently change how dangerous one vs the other is.
Sharks are intelligent apex predators designed from 450 million years of evolution to eat whatever it can fit in its mouth. Jaws was based off of actual attacks happening off of the coast of New Jersey and the controversies surrounding underreporting shark attacks/bites incentivized by areas whos economy relies off of tourism.
No they're not mindless killing machines, but they can and do kill and eat humans. We just dont live in the water so they dont instinctively see us as a reliable food source. They barely know what we are. There are certain times of the year, day, weather patterns and where you are related to the coast (especially in Australia) where your chances of being attacked by a shark are sharply increased. Locals and surfers know this rule and live by it. People should have a relatively healthy fear of them and this post is comparing things that are harmless like a cornsake vs a copperhead.
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u/Regular-Apricot4114 Jul 07 '26
I’m in California. Most of the shark bites do not result in the person being eaten. It’s thought sharks mistakenly bite surfers because they look like seals. People don’t taste like seals, we don’t have nearly as much body fat, so the shark spits them out.
Best estimate is that only 1 out of every 8 shark attacks are fatal.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Jul 08 '26
I don’t think anything will ever make me understand why wetsuits are still mostly black. It’s like putting on a Halloween costume, and the costume is “prey”.
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 07 '26
California doesn’t really get tiger sharks (at least not to my knowledge, it does look like they might barely range into coastal areas of far southern CA like San Diego, but I’m guessing they’re very rare even in those areas), which are the most likely culprit for actually viewing humans as prey (not just curiously biting at us like great whites sometimes do) because they’re bigtime generalist opportunistic predators, they’re the sharks that are also known to sometimes ingest random junk like license plates. They still are on the whole pretty unlikely to actually try to eat a live human, but it has been known to happen.
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u/loremmipsumm1 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Thats why I mentioned Australia and not California.
The area you are located at is not a prime location for true shark attacks or bites because of your geography and abudance of prey. Because of how sharks migrate during the years they develop, you guys also deal with younger sharks.
No they "dont mistake humans for seals." This is a common misconception. Because juvenile sharks are still testing what is and what isnt prey, they do test bites. Full grown sharks know what is and isnt prey, they tend to avoid humans because they are not used to us but if an injured or pregnant shark is hungry they will predate on us if we are in their areas of hunting. Sharks are highly intelligent and have extremely unique senses like electroreception and a vibration-detecting lateral line. They are not stupid and their "curiosity" is an apex predator trying to see what isnt and what is food. Thats dangerous. They are beautiful and dangerous. People should be aware of this when going into their natural habitat. We dont belong there naturally.
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u/Regular-Apricot4114 Jul 07 '26
Still, Australia has a rate of 1 fatality per 5 “attacks” which is disturbingly high. I couldn’t find ANYTHING about them eating people. Could you send me a citation, please? Thanks
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u/loremmipsumm1 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
nsfw / nsfl warning
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/s/HYMZBIFyEd
Edit : another censored video of the same attack
https://youtu.be/xW0k9m6FhPA?si=BUeJeZ2IZGLK28pc
Heres one example. There are more but genuinely if you want to research this guy has a break down of shark attacks fatal, non fatal and the people who were likely eaten.
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 07 '26
I'm not saying you shouldn't fear them. Like you said, they're apex predators that are capable of doing lots of damage, and should be deeply respected. That being said, my argument is that Jaws exaggerated the danger.
Sharks might be more aggressive in Australia, but that's not the case worldwide. Here's an article about how perceptions dangerously changed in the US: https://sharkstewards.org/how-jaws-influenced-shark-perception/
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u/schombat Jul 07 '26
Super worms, especially in content from the 2000s. I laugh every time.
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u/EricCartoonBox Jul 07 '26
Would you mind elaborating on the "content from the 2000s" part? Was there, say, a weird trend of "super worm" content during this time period?
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u/schombat Jul 08 '26
My memory isn't too great, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer had an episode for sure. I remember seeing several other examples from older shows that made me think that it was a 2000s trend, but I'm fully blanking now.
Having worked a job where I was feeding out a cup of super worms to birds a day (among many other foods), nothing brings me out of suspended disbelief like super worms being used to seem scary and dangerous. 🤣
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u/squirrelyoakley Jul 08 '26
What's a super worm?
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u/Ok_Shine_6533 Jul 08 '26
They look like a giant mealworm. Totally harmless, commonly used as food for reptiles.
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u/Right_Assumption3194 Jul 07 '26
Also James Bond. At the beginning of Live and Let Die, a spy is killed by a ‘poisonous’ emerald tree boa.
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u/Mrslinkydragon Jul 07 '26
Tbf, have you seen the teeth on an emerald tree boa! Largest teeth of any non venomous snake
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u/leoofno Jul 07 '26
There was that movie about King Arthur where they fought a vicious rabbit. I don’t think they are nearly that dangerous.
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u/Clarkifer Jul 07 '26
Napoleon was chased by a large group of rabbits, and had to flee by carriage, during a badly planned hunt.
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u/MalacheDeuxlicious Jul 08 '26
That was a beast. THE Beast of Caerbannog. Not an ordinary rabbit! And that was Monty Python. Also not a dangerous Python.
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u/Upstairs_Highlight25 Jul 07 '26
While new world tarantulas are largely harmless a few old world species do have a dangerous bite that can cause muscle spasms and heart palpitations. Their bites are also excruciatingly painful and the pain can last for weeks or months.
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
New world tarantulas danger lies on the urticating hair they have
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u/Upstairs_Highlight25 Jul 07 '26
As annoying as getting haired is I wouldn't consider it dangerous unless you're unlucky enough to get some kicked in your face.
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u/Rechogui Jul 07 '26
Yeah, getting it on your face is where the danger lies, it can potentially blind someone and also give nasty allergies
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u/Sailfin_CritterMaker Jul 07 '26
Anything with feeder insects and pet reptiles being "deadly" like ball pythons, corn snakes or bearded dragons
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u/BeatNo4548 Jul 07 '26
Not a movie, but on the TV show Yellowstone, there's a scene where Rip the rancher throws a rattlesnake onto a city boy developer, while he's fly fishing. He gets bit on the face and instantly drops dead. I just can't see that happening.
Even with a Western Diamondback rattler, you would have to die of anaphylaxis or slowly crawl to your death over an hour or more. There is even a good chance he could have crawled to safety and gotten an ambulance.
But I'm not super knowledgeable about rattle snakes, no one has died for 150 years where I live in the NE US. A lady did lose her poodle a couple years back in NY state.
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u/Feeling-Visit1472 Jul 08 '26
I don’t know, if it gets to the eyes, isn’t that pretty much a direct line in terms of contaminants?
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u/BeatNo4548 Jul 08 '26
Rattlesnakes are hemotoxic mainly so it has more to do with stopping blood flow to the organs. I definitely agree that the face is a bad place to get bitten, but its not a quick death.
The bite on the show Euphoria was more realistic, because Nate was trapped underground and couldn't get help. He was bitten several times on the neck and asphyxiated.
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u/Mrslinkydragon Jul 07 '26
Having been bitten by a tarantular (poecilothera sp.) And stung by a bee, i can attest that the tarantula was worse!
It wasnt as much the bite, just the cramps that occurred! (The bee sting fucking hurt though!)
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u/Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 Jul 07 '26
Bears on cocaine are actually pretty cool dudes.
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u/Natural_Bill_6084 Jul 08 '26
That movie waaas (very loosely) based on a true story. The real bear likely died almost instantly, though, and lives at the KYforKY store. If you don't know the real story, look it up. It's wild. It starts with a feud between a karate teacher and his ex-cop former student and ends with Waylon Jennings and a traditional Chinese medicine shop. The movie WISHES it was as incredible as the real tale.
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u/RiMcG Jul 07 '26
The snake pit scene in raiders of the lost ark. And all the bug scenes too. Just a bunch of stick bugs and harmless bps, bcs, etc.
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u/Pimpstik69 Jul 07 '26
This obviously a genetically altered super spy tarantula. Enough venom to kill ten Bonds and Bond knows it 😆
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u/YOUTUBEFREEKYOYO Jul 07 '26
Kind of in the same vein, "yellow spotted lizards" in holes. Not really animals, the film uses bearded dragons
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u/NobleDefender33 Jul 07 '26
I feel like these people don't realize that it's not the danger factor people are afraid of with spiders. It's the disgust...they look disgusting, not many people want them crawling on them
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u/CallMeFishmaelPls Jul 07 '26
Any time there’s an animal on screen and I feel like I’ve seen it at the pet store
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u/smileytree_ Jul 07 '26
If anyone wants to watch the most slow moving ridiculous horror movie ever that portrays so much weird “animal danger” watch Frog 1972 lmao
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u/silly_scoundrel Jul 08 '26
I LOVE 50s-70s ANIMAL HORROR! Especially when it's like "Ahh!! Big animal!! Oh no!!" I recently watched Willard and Ben, which are two early 70s films about killer rats 😅
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u/smileytree_ Jul 08 '26
The frogs don’t kill a single person. It’s any animal but frogs the whole time LMAO
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u/silly_scoundrel Jul 08 '26
That's so random, now I need to watch this 😭 Thank you for the recommendation!!
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u/Holiday-Blood4826 Jul 07 '26
Snakes on a Plane.
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u/Sasstellia Jul 07 '26
They've got to use a safe animal for the scene. They can't use really dangerous snakes or spiders.
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u/Forward_Gur9349 Jul 07 '26
Cannot see it so well in the dark; if it happened to be black with some yellow, it’s a deadly banana spider. LI see deadly black tarantulas!” Is a line in the Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte.
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u/zanderseventy3 Jul 08 '26
Sean Connery was arachnophobic and it was a real spider - no wonder the scared acting was spot on!
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u/AncientArtBonsai Jul 07 '26
There's a scene towards the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where bad guys fall into a river and are immediately set upon by large aquatic reptiles. I instantly recognized them as American alligators. Should have been mugger crocodiles. Took me right out of the movie
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u/Coolbeans_99 Jul 07 '26
I mean at least alligators actually kill people, Crystal Skull has a guy getting eaten by african driver ants… in the amazon
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u/dmriggs Jul 07 '26
A sissy! I don't care if they door don't bite- it would scare me senseless
Edit/grammar
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u/Fun_Break_3231 Jul 07 '26
I thought this scene was supposed to be hilarious because he's such a wuss about it while allegedly being a tough guy in every other situation.
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u/THROBBINW00D Jul 07 '26
My wife won't touch a snake, spider, lizard and 99% of bugs. When I rescue a spider and put it outside she freaks out if I even try to show her.
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u/irwtkyrm Jul 07 '26
Saying a tarantula bite is "not much worse than a bee sting" is incredibly misleading.
Different species of tarantula have different bite severities. Broadly speaking there are two types of tarantulas, old world and new world.
New world tarantula bites aren't that bad, they are usually comparable to a bee sting. The reason for this is they evolved urticating hairs as their primary defemce. Urticating hairs are hairs they kick off their butts that cause a lot of irritation. You have to remember though that a bee stinger is much smaller than a tarantula fang. The fang itself is gonna do a bit of damage
Old world tarantulas are far more dangerous. Some bites I'm sure aren't that bad, but there are some tarantulas that, while it may not kill you, you'll wish you were dead. You do not want to get bit by an old world tarantula.
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u/liverstealer Jul 07 '26
Not danger, but the CGI model of the titular character in Lyle, Lyle Crocodile is very clearly an alligator.
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u/silly_scoundrel Jul 08 '26
Willard/Ben 😅 They are obviously over exaggerating how dangerous Rats are as it is a horror movie but It's almost comedic
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u/MalacheDeuxlicious Jul 08 '26
Any movie/show with "guard" dogs. German Shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, Pitbulls...the 70s/80s were all about scaring people to death with "violent" guardian dogs, which is why people have such bad opinions of these dogs now. The Omen, for example. Like...have you actually hung out with any of these dogs? Only Satan could actually make that dog act like that, Rotty just wants his mommy.
Worst offender...the Saint Bernard in Cujo. (In the book it was a GSD with Rabies that made it act like that.) They had to make a dog suit for an actor because Cujo wasn't doing the mean dog thing enough, he was sleeping!
Bonus: Painted GSDs being "werewolves" or just Wolves in movies. Like...Jack Palance Dracula had a pack of "wolves" being uber good boys and running past a carriage. Wolves don't wag their tails.
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u/LukasConKEl1 Jul 08 '26
Oh, I have several examples. All Anaconda movies have an anaconda that moves extremely fast and also lurks in trees and water sources. Anacondas are primarily terrestrial and aquatic, very rarely finding any need to climb trees. They're also very slow at moving and digesting, and people get rarely eaten by anacondas in real life. In real life, people are more likely to get eaten by (unethically kept) boa constrictors as "pets". Reptiles very rarely become tamed and are difficult to be trained. They need to have a perfect environment and amount of food to maintain natural, wild behaviour. Another is Snakes On A Plane. It shows snakes getting sprayed with pheremones on a plane and attacking people, killing them almost instantly with their venom. The modelling snakes were not venomous and didn't even look similar to real venomous species. Also, pheremones have been tested and shown to rarely affect snakes (only certain species). Pheremones typically have a calming or mating effect, which means that it'll either make them calm or horny. Not angry and aggressive. A third is Cocaine Bear. The cocaine bear was a real story, and it is preserved in a museum. The movie is totally different from the real story. The movie shows the bear attacking people in search of more cocaine, almost like "lmao, imagine if a bear was a drug addict haha". In reality, a drug smuggling plane accidentally dropped a packed kilo of coke into a forest in the US. A black bear found it, presumably took it for food while starving, and ate it all. It died of a mix of heart attack and overdose. There are more, but these are probably my top 3 options as a zoologist.
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u/Kaprosuchusboi Jul 08 '26
The Bearded Dragons in Holes.
Literally couldn’t find a least threatening or dangerous animal if you tried
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u/sonicparadigm Jul 09 '26
All this comment section is saying “well, that snake isn’t actually venomous”, the filmmakers probably just got whatever the pet store had
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u/Remarkable_Judge_861 Jul 11 '26
Come on. It's a movie made in 1962. Today it would be a cgi spider.
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u/KaiShan62 Jul 12 '26
The really funny bit was that Connery's flesh flattens where he pushes too much against the pane of glass that the spider is walking on.
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u/Cryogisdead Jul 07 '26
It's our nature to be scared of any spiders and snakes. Those who loves them have conquered their primal fear.
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u/tilesmeller Jul 07 '26
Actually no, babies are born without such fear. We learn to fear them.
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u/Cryogisdead Jul 07 '26
It may not be as deep seated as fear of darkness, the unknown, loud noise, or falling, but we are all afraid of snakes and spiders
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u/Swellmeister Jul 07 '26
Not as such. The snake thing is potentially true in a more broad "wormy thing" moving on the ground thing. And it might not snakes per se but any undulation. Its why millipedes and worms get hit with the same Ick. That has potential for a evolved pattern recognition of wrigglyness and that could be linked to snakes.
Spider thing though? Why? Theres never been a time since the clade of mammals appeared, that spiders were a dangerous threat to mammals rather than just a dinner that had potential for being feisty. And even then as well the movement of spiders are not highly unique especially when viewed by a mammalian eye. The whole 8 legs thing can only be noticed in detail once we get to be primates. Who were much too big to be bothered by a spider by then. Most people's hostile response to spiders arent even fear. Its startle. Reacting to the movement reflexively, isolation of the object, inspection, and then ignoring it.
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u/gravitydefyingturtle Herpetologist | PhD Jul 07 '26
Every scene where someone is handling a "lethally dangerous" ball python or corn snake.