the US is both authoritarian and a 3rd world country so it underreports everything (partially intentional, partially due to no resources allocated towards data)
For some reason people outside of the prairies don't think we have venomous wildlife up here. People where I live are often surprised to find out we have black widows, hobospiders, ect; even scorpions in the Okanagan. Lack of awareness probably leads to more people getting stung/bit
One time i was on mushrooms at a beach here with a guy from Australia and we went to sit on a bench at night. I plopped right down and he goes "you don't have to check for spiders?" At the time I laughed and said no way.
Realized the next day that we totally should be checking when we sit down outdoors even if it's rare a black widow bite is no joke
Yeah, when I was 20 I had an Aussie coworker that I thought had OCD tendencies because he would habitualy tip his steel toes upside down before putting them on, turns out it was just second nature and basically muscle memory for him for him to do spider checks. The thought of "death by putting on boots" never even occurred to me lol
There are also several species of venomous snakes in the Praries, it's fairly easy to startle one when you are hiking through a field and get bit. Also this is probably counting wasp stings and there are some many wasps everywhere in summer.
There are also Japanese murder hornets that are starting to spread in NA.
As far as question 2 goes: I developed a venomous animal contact fetish in 2017. I'm so sorry.
Maybe climate-related habitat disruption that forces animals into human areas to look for food. The last several dry years have seen more and more coyotes around here at night, sometimes even on the main drag
Rattle snakes get a lot of benefits living close to housing developments. Warm pavement to sun on and most of the trees/shrubs have been cleared and probably make rodents easier to catch.
I'm going to assume without doing any research that there's a significant difference in reporting standards going on here. In Canada someone who gets bitten is more likely to rush to an emergency room because of the free healthcare. As for the wild swings up and down, I have no godly idea.
Did the US and Mexico start having weekly scorpion tossing tournaments in 2018?
Looks like Mexico & US changed their reporting mechanism, also this predates COVID.
