Whether you’re a pet owner or a bushwalker, animal bite first aid could save your life. While most Australian animal encounters are positive, when things go wrong, you need to know how to act.
Animal bites send more than 20,000 Australians to the emergency department each year. Cats and dogs were responsible for over half, while wildlife, particularly snakes, made up almost a quarter. The good news is that most of these can be prevented with first aid. Whether you’re dealing with an unfortunate pet incident or facing Australia’s unique and venomous wildlife, the difference between those who need to go to hospital and those who don’t often comes down to what happens in the first few minutes.
Animal Bite Symptoms and Severity
Your body’s response to an animal bite provides critical information about how bad it might be. Signs you need animal bite first aid include severe bleeding, visible bone, or deep tissue damage. Pain and swelling may develop hours later, but severe and immediate pain combined with an inability to move the bitten area suggests a level of damage needing a hospital visit.
The location of the bite on the body affects both the high risk of infection and potential complications. Animal bites to the hands, face, and joints have a higher rate of infection. Signs of infection include increasing redness, the wound feeling excessively warm to touch, pus, and red streaks around the bite site. Fever, chills, and swollen lymph nodes may indicate that the bacterial infection has spread.
The type of animal also impacts the severity of the bite and its potential complications. Creatures known to be potentially venomous, such as snakes and spiders, should be of concern if the bite is followed by breathing, muscle weakness, or pain spreading beyond the bite site. Finally, all wild animal bites should be considered serious, especially from mammals such as bats, and marine creatures.
Universal Animal Bite First Aid Treatments
Regardless of which creature bit you, animal bite first aid remains largely the same. Before worrying about whether you need antivenom or antibiotics, these are the animal bite first aid actions you always need to take:
Immediate Safety
Personal safety always takes priority. You should distance yourself and others from the animal before attempting any first aid in case it still poses a threat. Move slowly and calmly away from the animal. Only move the victim if the animal poses an immediate threat and you can do so without putting yourself at serious risk. If indoors, put physical barriers like furniture or doors between you and the animal.
Assess the Victim
Once at a safe distance, assess the victim’s condition to see what kind of first aid they need, if first aid will be enough, or if they need professional help.
Check to see if the victim is conscious by asking them questions or gently tapping their shoulder to see if they respond. Watch their chest rise and fall; normal breathing is 12 to 20 breaths per minute for adults, and listen for gasping, wheezing, or laboured breathing. Look for signs of shock like pale, cold, or clammy skin. Assess whether any bleeding is slow or steady or spurting. Ask the victim to wiggle their fingers and toes, and gently move each limb through a small range of motion to check for broken bones or nerve damage.
Multiple bites, shock, unconsciousness, or severe bleeding all require immediate professional help.
Hygiene and Wound Cleaning
Wash your hands with soap and water before handling the wound to prevent the spread of bacteria from the animal’s mouth. The wound itself should be washed with mild soap and gently running water for 3-5 minutes to flush out any debris. Avoid scrubbing as this can cause further damage. Finally, gently pat the wound dry.
Control Bleeding
If the victim is bleeding and blood is flowing slowly and steadily from the wound you’ll need to apply pressure to the site using a clean cloth or sterile dressing to allow the wound to clot. Maintain steady pressure for 10-15 minutes to stop the bleeding. If blood soaks through the first bandage, add additional layers rather than replacing layers and releasing pressure. If possible, keep the bitten area elevated and above the heart.
For severe bleeding where blood forcefully spurts out with each heartbeat or it soaks through multiple layers of bandaging within seconds, a tourniquet may be required. If one isn’t available, use a wide band of fabric or belt. To apply a tourniquet, wrap it around the limb 5-7cm above the wound but never directly over a joint. Tie it with a simple knot, place a stick or rigid object on top of the knot, and tie another knot over the stick to secure it. Note the time of application so emergency services can remove it as soon as appropriate; tourniquets can cause damage and should only be used in life-threatening situations.
Wound Dressing
Apply a bandage based on how serious the bite is. Minor cuts that only break the skin should be fine with just a simple band-aid. Deeper wounds need multiple layers of sterile gauze pads. Place the gauze directly over the wound, then secure it with medical tape on all four sides or wrap a roller bandage around the area. The dressing should be snug enough to stay in place and provide gentle pressure, but you should be able to slip a finger underneath the bandage. If you can’t, or if the area below the dressing becomes numb, tingly, or turns pale or blue, the dressing is too tight and needs to be loosened immediately to restore circulation.
Dressings should be changed daily or when they become wet or dirty. This is a good opportunity to check for signs of infection including spreading redness, warmth around the wound, increased swelling, bus, or rotten smells. If any of these are present, seek medical help immediately.
Animal Bite First Aid by Species
The animal that bit you matters. While the basic animal bite first aid remains the same, some creatures inject venom while others are more likely to carry specific diseases.
Cat and Dog Bite First Aid
Dog and cat bites are the most common animal bites in Australia. These require only the universal first aid steps: safety, hygiene, bleeding control, cleaning, and bandaging. When pets bite, most of the time it’s on familiar animals, including their human owners. Family pets and provoked attacks are less likely to carry the risk of disease transmission.
Snake Bite First Aid
Most Australian snakes are venomous. Bites from non-venomous species should be taken just as seriously, and if you’re ever bitten and not sure of the type of snake, you should treat it as though it was venomous just in case.
Snake bite first aid uses the pressure immobilisation technique. First, a splint should be placed alongside the bitten limb to keep it immobilised and prevent the spread of venom. The splint should then be secured in place with a pressure bandage, wrapped slightly tighter than a normal bandage; not so tight as to cut off circulation but firm enough you cannot slide a finger under it. The victim should be kept still, preferable lying down.
Snake bite first aid comes with several myths you should avoid. Cutting the wound or sucking out the venom don’t work and can actually introduce infection. Tourniquets should not be used as these also do nothing to prevent the spread of venom and may cause tissue damage. Snakebites should not be washed as the venom left in the wound helps hospitals identify the species and thus the correct antivenom. Finally, do not attempt to catch or kill the snake for identification as this only creates the risk of additional bites.
Spider Bites
Spiders, like snakes, can be both venomous and non-venomous, and all bites should be treated with the same level of caution if you’re not certain of which species bit you.
The only two spider bites to be concerned about in Australia are the funnel-web spider and the redback spider. Funnel-web spider bites require the same pressure immobilisation technique used for snake bites, while redback spider bites should be treated with a cold compress. Both these species are venomous and both treatments should be followed up with an immediate trip to the hospital. While potentially fatal, thanks to antivenoms no deaths have been recorded from either species in decades.
Bat Bites
Due to Australian bat lyssavirus transmission, any contact with bats, including bites or scratches, and handling dead bats, requires immediate professional medical intervention. Rather than administering first aid, head to hospital within 48 hours.
Marine Animal Bites and Stings
Marine animal bites can create unique first aid challenges due to the potential for envenomation, and salt water’s impact on healing.
With shark bites, the primary concern is the massive blood loss. Use pressure techniques to control any bleeding, and consider a tourniquet if the bleeding appears life threatening. Blue-ringed octopus bites should be treated with the pressure immobilisation technique, but calling for help is your first priority as they carry enough venom to kill 26 humans and there is currently no known antivenom.
For general marine animal bite first aid, use fresh water to clean any sand, bacteria, or animal parts from the wound. Do not use sea water as it isn’t sterile, and in cases of envenomation, can increase the amount of venom injected into the body.
When to Seek Emergency Medical Care
Sometimes animal bite first aid isn’t enough. Call emergency services on triple zero (000) immediately if an animal bite is bleeding severely and not responding to direct pressure within 10-15 minutes. Large animal attacks, multiple bites, or bites to the head, neck, or major blood vessels also require immediate professional help. Victims showing signs of shock, loss of consciousness, or allergic reactions should seek medical attention regardless of the bite’s severity.
Signs of severe envenomation from snakes, spiders, or marine animals require immediate hospital treatment. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, muscle weakness, paralysis, severe pain spreading from the bite site, nausea and vomiting, or an altered mental status.
Allergic reactions can occur with any animal bite. Hives, swelling of the face or throat, difficulty breathing, or rapid pulse indicate anaphylaxis requiring immediate epinephrine.
How To Prevent Animal Bites
Prevention is always better than cure, and animal bite first aid is no different. Most animal bites are preventable through common sense.
Teach your children early to not approach sleeping, eating, or injured animals, and how to recognise warning signs like raised hackles, bared teeth, flattened ears, or aggressive noises. Always keep children supervised around pets.
When outdoors, avoid making unnecessary noise to surprise wild animals, and never approach them. Keep any food with you properly stored, and wear strong footwear to reduce the risk of ankle bites.
Get a tetanus vaccination, and keep both your and your pets’ vaccinations up to date so that when bites do happen the risk of disease transmission is low.
Learn First Aid for Animal Bites and Scratches
An animal bite can happen to anyone at any time. The difference between a minor incident and a medical emergency often comes down to one thing: knowing animal bite first aid so you can take action in those critical first few minutes. With a hands-on first aid training course you can learn how to help someone bitten by an animal, and maybe even save a life.
FAQs
Cat bites are deceptively dangerous. Cats’ narrow, sharp teeth cause deep puncture wounds that seal quickly, trapping bacteria. Approximately 50% of cat bites become infected, with Pasteurella multocida being the most common culprit.
A pressure bandage and a regular bandage are the same thing, they are just named differently based on how firmly they are applied.
While Australia does not have the rabies virus, Australian bat lyssavirus is closely related to rabies, virtually indistinguishable, and just as fatal. A rabies vaccination protects against both and can be used by hospitals to treat contact with bats.
