So cute and squidgy

You're viewing a single thread.

47 comments

For those who don't know: Blue-Ringed Octopus 🐙
- "The blue-ringed octopus, despite its small size, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes. Their bites are tiny and often painless, with many victims not realizing they have been envenomated until respiratory depression and paralysis begins.[11] No blue-ringed octopus antivenom is available.[12]"
  Ok. Then I'd rather have a dog.
  
  Pretty sure no dog antivenom is available either. I'm just going to get a venomous snake to be safe.
  
  This is why you start with small bites and build up an immunity. Then work your way up to larger breeds. You think people have chihuahuas because they actually want one?
  
  Best explanation as to why people have chihuahuas I've ever read.
  
  Good call. Dog venom works by sneaking into your heart, and they don't even have to bite you.
  
  This is correct. Tetrodotoxin. Like in pufferfish. It blocks nerve signals to muscles causing paralysis. There is no antivenom.
  If you got it from eating pufferfish, best you can do is administer activated charcoal to absorb as much as possible that hasn’t already made it into the bloodstream. After that, all you can do is manually run the heart and lungs until it wears off.
  So you basically need to be really close to a hospital or clinic, somehow convey what’s happened (while possibly unable to talk or move) and be lucky enough that said hospital has the resources to maybe keep you alive until it is out of your system.
  
  Some more hopeful information about this little bugger:
  It's not ACTUALLY venomous. As in it doesn't inject you with a lethal substance, rather, it injects you with a nerve-toxin which disables your ability to open/close your lungs, which kills you. This sounds just as bad, but it means if you can get to a hospital, and make it to a ventilator, you'll be back to normal by the next day.
  
  Venom doesn’t need to be lethal to be venom.
  Venom is a toxin produced by an animal that is actively delivered through a wound by means of a bite, sting, or similar action.
  Blue Ringed octopuses are venomous.
  
  @Cypher @LordMcAlister@lemmy.world....and lethal
  
  The scary part is that it looks like you won't even feel that you have been bitten, and will know that when you start having problems breathing, and when that happens every second counts.
  Looking at the colors, it looks like it was in fight mode. The person holding it could already be dead.
- They can be identified by their yellowish skin and characteristic blue and black rings that change color dramatically when the animal is threatened.
  Anything that becomes more visible when you threaten it... you're not the threat.
- A video, originally posted on TikTok, of a tourist in Australia handling a blue-ringed octopus went viral in January 2019.
  Is that where this picture is from? Or did a second person think it was a good idea?

47 comments