Climate changeIt is said that by 2050 climate change will be the biggest threat to biodiversity in America. So the way venomous animals would cope with it would be by migrating to new latitudes away from tropical areas and into densely inhabited locations, which may put 6.7 million more people at risk of suffering bites or stings.
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The situation in Mexico focusing in León, GuanajuatoDid you know that Mexico is the country with the highest number of venomous spices with up to 80 of them?
Besides, it is followed by Brazil with 79 and Australia with 66. Moreover, the panorama at the national level of people suffering from stings and bites of snakes, scorpions and spiders shows an upward trend, since just by comparing 2018 with 2019, cases increased by 5%. Also, in 2019, León, Guanajuato was the city that had the most scorpion bites worldwide, reaching 43,913 cases. |
"This is a public health problem, as there are many cases and few antivenoms”
- Enrique Sandoval Orozco (biologist and researcher)
INTERESTING FACTS
Information by species
Venomous snakes will push farther into the northern United States and Canada and southward in Argentina and even Chile by 2050.
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There has been a large increase in violin spider bites and a high incidence of black widow spiders in the city of León, according to the biologist Enrique Sandoval Orozco. Also, it has been said that spiders are shifting farther north and will take advantage of central heating to survive the harsh winters indoors.
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The medical toxicologist Timothy Erickson suspects that scorpions will expand their populations. Also, the conservation biologist Carlos Yañez Arenas pointed out that the plan to encounter this situation is to “identify rural communities that currently have no risk of scorpionism but could become vulnerable in the future”.
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