This 45 minute highly entertaining story of our relationship with the environment that focuses upon the venomous creepy crawlies that can be found in our homes (spiders, scorpions, centipedes and snakes).

Venom explores of our perceptions and attitudes towards venomous animals, how they impact human civilisation, and how mankind can benefit from Nature’s ultimate weapon. For most people, venomous animals represent mythical creatures whose reputation is loosely sewn together with old wives tales, rumors, Internet hoaxes, hearsay and exaggerations. Behind their veil of venomosity, lies a hidden world that showcases Nature’s ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Join Jonathan Leeming on an exciting day time exploration in search of all kind of animals that creep and crawl. It will be a morning of spiders, scorpions, insects, frogs, toads and if we are lucky snakes! This family event is both fun and educating.  

The miracle of nature is that whenever there has been a challenge, there is an organism that has found a way to conquer it. There are just over 8.7 million described plants and animals on Earth which are essentially individual science experiments, perpetually testing out new ways of doing things in order to find a better way. There is no doubt that we have much to learn from this 4.85 billion years of natural capital accumulation. Since humans live under the same laws of nature and under the same conditions, it makes sense that we learn from the inner workings of the natural world.

The spider and scorpion first aid walk is an exploration of Kloofendal Nature Reserve during which you’ll get to have a look at look at Violin Spiders and some of the scorpion that inhabit the area. We’ll have a short lecture with visuals on medically important spiders and scorpions and their bites and stings. I’ll cover identification, symptoms, first aid and where to get free medical advice if you ever need it.