Australian Teen Stung By The World’s Most Toxic Animal, A Blue-Ringed Octopus, While Hunting For Seashells

A single blue-ringed octopus holds enough powerful tetrodotoxin to kill 26 humans and there is no anti-venom for a sting. Doctors treat the symptoms and hope for a miracle, but luckily, bites from blue-ringed octopuses are rare and it appears as if the latest incident in Perth will end okay.

It happened when an 18-year-old was searching the beach for seashells. He was hunting for a present to give his niece who is a toddler and thought he’d found the perfect shell.

Then the world turned upside down when he pulled the shell out of his pocket to give it to his niece and the deadly blue-ringed octopus emerged. Had it been moments later it’s possible the toddler would have gotten ahold of the blue-ringed octopus.

After a few tense moments, they discovered the blue-ringed octopus had bitten him on the leg. He was immediately taken to the hospital where he was treated for six consecutive hours, according to this report from Australi’s 7 News:

The bite is painless. The tetrodotoxin is not. What the neurotoxic venom does is block ‘the transmission of nerve impulses.’ What this leads to is muscle’s inability to contract which can be deadly on its own but the blocking of nerve transmission can essentially shut everything down in a hurry.

That article from the Natural History Museum cites the tetrodotoxin from a blue-ringed octopus as being “over 1,000 times more toxic than cyanide.” An article on For The Win says Australian officials are urging caution after this near-fatal incident.

Blue-Ringed Octopus Encounters

What I find wild, every time I read about a close encounter with a blue-ringed octopus, is how there are still people on planet Earth that don’t know what these creatures are and how toxic they are.

This story from January Blew. My. Mind.

A tourist in Bali held a deadly blue-ringed octopus somehow without being bitten. And it wasn’t until a while later that they realized what was happening in the video they’d filmed:

Folks, don’t pick up wild animals. It’s that simple. Be careful out there.