What It’s Like to Nearly Die From the Venom of a Blue-Ringed Octopus

Authored by slate.com and submitted by arielwollinger

The shy, innocent, deadly blue-ringed octopus. Photo by Yusran Abdul Rahman/Shutterstock

From the blue-ringed octopus’s perspective, your breathless screaming and vomiting aren’t her fault. This little lady—barely the length of a pencil, from tentacle tip to tentacle tip—was just lurking in a nice rock crevice on an Australian beach. With her mellow nature and yellowish-brown skin that matched the rocks, she was patiently waiting for a delicious crab to scuttle by. Even when you leaned over her, she tried to warn you by flashing those bright blue rings dappling her body.

Then you picked her up. You were probably paying so much attention to the wiggle of her tentacles and the texture of her tiny suckers that you didn’t notice the painless nip from her parrotlike beak.

Now, 10 minutes later, you notice something strange. Your lips are going numb. So is your face. You want to yell for help but can’t: It’s getting harder to speak. And your stomach feels—oh, gross! Right in front of everyone.

Somebody calls an ambulance. It’s getting tough to stand. It’s getting tough to breathe. The numbness is spreading to your hands, feet, and chest. And you continue to be aware for every agonizing moment of it.

You get to the hospital in time. You get hooked up to a ventilator, the machine forcing air into your lungs because your diaphragm is paralyzed. No antidote, the doctors say. You have to wait it out. About 15 long hours later, your muscles start working again. They take you off the ventilator. You can breathe.

Congratulations! You survived being bitten by one of the world’s most venomous animals.

So what the hell just happened?

Let’s go back to that little octopus who was just minding her business. When you picked her up and she bit you, you got dosed with venom from her salivary glands. If you were a crab, some chemicals in her venom would have paralyzed you so that she could dine on your delicious insides. But because you’re a human, it’s a different chemical in her venom that affects you: tetrodotoxin. The same chemical that makes puffer fish meat so deadly; the chemical that an Australian doctor calls “one of the most potent toxins known to mammals.“

But the octopus doesn’t make her own tetrodotoxin. Scientists think that she grows microbes inside her salivary glands that make it for her. But the tetrodotoxin doesn’t just stay in her saliva: It’s distributed throughout her body. When she lays her eggs, even those will be filled with tetrodotoxin to deter predators.

When that frightened little octopus bites, the tetrodotoxin in her saliva quickly enters your bloodstream. With lethal biochemical precision, it blocks the tiny channels that let sodium ions enter your nerves—sodium ions that are necessary for your nerves to tell muscles like your diaphragm to move. It doesn’t take much tetrodotoxin to paralyze your diaphragm. A single 25-gram octopus—not quite the weight of one slice of bread—has enough tetrodotoxin to suffocate 10 men.

It’s a credit to the blue-ringed octopus’ docile and solitary nature—and to our emergency departments—that more people don’t die from this venom. These little octopuses spread north from Australia to Okinawa, Japan, and west from the Philippines to India. With a range like that, it’s impressive that there have been only three deaths reported, although there have been nonlethal bites and recent food poisonings in Taipei, Taiwan, linked to people eating these octopuses.

But don’t villainize the blue-ringed octopus. She was just hanging out, hoping for a crab snack, when you went all Curious George on her. Of course it’s part of our nature to gawk at cool animals we find on the beach. But it’s part of her nature to defend herself.

After all, she did try to warn you.

Read more of Slate’s stories on poisonous animals:

chatterbox272 on January 16th, 2020 at 08:30 UTC »

One of my swim teachers told a story about one of these when she was out swimming and boating with her father and some family friends. The old man had a run-in with one, she realised had happened and hauled him onto the boat, and for lack of any other ideas started CPR while one of the family friends drove the boat back to shore and called for an ambulance. They were a fair bit out and it took a while to get back and for the ambulance to arrive, she was pretty banged up from the exertion (CPR is hard work), and the friends were telling her "he's gone, it's been too long and he can't breathe, you're just going to hurt yourself if you keep going". Meanwhile the old man is totally conscious, hearing every goddamn word of his friends saying to let him die whilst his daughter does everything she can to save him. He ended up making it, their friendship with the other people wasn't so lucky

Jackamatazz on January 16th, 2020 at 05:14 UTC »

Was snorkeling near a reef on Kangaroo Island and one of these little fuckers was just chilling in open water next to the reef instead of in a nice rock pool (where it was bloody supposed to be). I didn’t see it until it was about 30cm away from where I was swimming as it was floating up quite high and I was looking at the reef... Don’t think I’ve ever swam backwards while keeping An eye on it so quickly. Ain’t about to die nuh-uh.

outline_link_bot on January 16th, 2020 at 03:16 UTC »

What It’s Like to Nearly Die From the Venom of a Blue-Ringed Octopus

Decluttered version of this Slate Magazine's article archived on June 23, 2015 can be viewed on https://outline.com/HMrKF3