Cold Blooded Killers - A guide to the deadliest and most dangerous animals on the planet

by Peter Elliott

From venomous snakes to great white sharks to poison arrow frogs. Everything you need to know about all the deadly animals that bite, sting, chomp and poison.

Learn about - How to understand the "LD50" test that measures venom potency Why the world's most venomous creature isn't a snake, spider or jellyfish How the Komodo dragon is able to kill prey with one bite (Hint - it's not just its poor oral hygiene) Whether the Sydney Funnel-Web or the Brazilian Wandering Spider is the world's deadliest. Oh, and don't forget the Six-Eyed Sand Spider... How the world's most venomous snake has never killed anyone, yet a much less potent snake kills tens of thousands of people every year. And even this doesn't come close to the creature that kills more than a million people each and every year.

This is not another serious encyclopedic reference to deadly animals (there are enough of those already!).

Peter Elliott and his team of lowly paid researchers have spent months trawling through research papers and expert interviews to distill everything down to the most interesting and entertaining facts.

Peter has spent almost every waking hour researching the animals in this books, to the extent that his dreams are now filled with Funnel-Web Spiders and a recurring nightmare where he is a Cape Fur Seal swimming in False Bay of the South African coast (This may be due to the fact that the author has a body fat percentage roughly approximating an adult seal).

While Peter wakes up in a cold sweat each night, sure that Funnel-Web spiderlings have made a nest in his mouth while he slept, you can profit from his suffering with the most entertaining book on dangerous animals you are likely to read.

The book covers only the most interesting and toxic snakes, spiders, scorpions, sharks, crocodiles, lizards and the dizzying array of things that will kill you if you dare to go into the water off Australia. Plus a clear explanation of the LD50 system for measuring how potent a particular venom is.

Grab a copy today - it may just save your life* (*Actually, we can't back this up - this is just marketing spin)

Genres: Natural History

112 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 8, 2014

Reviews

[Judith Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laugh outloud

I am curious about venomous animals, and find reading about them can be interesting. These books can be travelogues, because the habitats of these creatures is most often in fascinating places. However this book is not only informative but is laugh out loud funny. While very educational, the author is very witty. The asides and personal phobia bits, included in the text are the best. All educational tomes should be written in this vain it surely would make learning fun. I dare you to read this book without laughing or at least smiling..

[Robert Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cold Blooded Killers by Peter Elliott is not the most detailed or inclusive of such books, but is an excellent one. He deals only with the most dangerous of the cold-blooded (or, in the case of jellyfish and their relatives, non-blooded) animals in the category. While Elliott doesn't downplay the risks any of these creatures represent, he is careful not to make them sound more dangerous than they are, which, in most cases, means their reputations far exceed the dangers they represent. While Elliott presents good scientific data, he writes in a clear, non-technical manner, making the book an easy read. His sense of humor makes itself felt through Cold Blooded killers, quite possibly making this book the lightest and most entertaining of its type. there are a small number of technical mistakes, for instance his saying the black mamba, at 14 feet, is the longest of the venomous snakes, a title Elliott knows (and earlier states) belongs to the king cobra. Other than a few minor problems like this, more errors of proof reading than anything and not seriously taking away from the book, Cold Blood Killers is excellent. I was especially impressed by his doing something seldom done, clearly explaining the difference between a poisonous animal and a venomous one, and giving brief, understandable summary of the major types of toxins involved. While not a book for the expert, for the average person with an interest in the area, Peter Elliott's Cold Blooded Killers is excellent.