It's coronavirus time, which means everyone's locked indoors.
Sick and tired of quarantine, you decide to go where you can't possibly infect, or be
infected, by the virus- nature!
Except maybe all this time indoors has made you forget one crucial fact: nature sucks
and really wants to kill you.
Don’t worry, Infographics is here to remind you of all the reasons man invented apartment
buildings and Netflix, with some of the most venomous bites and stings in the world.
Warning: some of these entries contain images that may be difficult to stomach.
Black Widow Spider
Scarlet Johannson notwithstanding, black widow bites are pretty terrible affairs.
These spiders can be identified by the red hourglass-like coloring on the abdomen set
against a black body, and they inhabit every continent on earth except Antarctica.
With venom as much as 15 times as potent as a rattlesnake, these tiny eight-legged horrors
can cause anything from moderate discomfort to death, depending on how sensitive the person
is to the venom- luckily they discharge far less venom than a rattlesnake per bite, or
else they'd surely be exponentially more deadly.
So what delights are in store for you after getting a lovebite from everyone’s second-favorite
Black Widow?
Within fifteen minutes you'll start feeling cramps in the area where you were bitten,
as your nervous system fires off random signals uncontrollably.
Within the first hour, your body will begin to experience powerful muscle spasms as the
venom goes all 2007 Britney Spears on your neurotransmitters (animators: show a Britney
Spears with shaved head smashing human cells to pieces).
Now the pain begins to become acute, and good news for all you wannabe-heart throbs, because
your abdomen will become rock-hard as the muscles cramp.
The venom isn't trying to give you a sweet beach bod though, instead the alpha-latrotoxin
and accompanying cocktail of chemicals is busy trying to kill as many of your nerve
endings as possible.
Remember, this is a spider that kills by paralyzing its prey.
Luckily for most of you, you're too big for the venom to completely shut down your nervous
system.
Unluckily for you, things are still going to be very, very painful.
After about 3 hours your cramps will become acute, leading to extreme pain.
You may be looking for painkillers at this point, but because of the effect of narcotics
on the body, doctors likely won't prescribe them for fear of helping the venom shut down
your breathing.
Your skin will get clammy and your blood pressure drop, which will lead to mild delirium and
mental confusion.
Pregnant women will likely go into labor at this point.
As you move into day 2 of your ordeal, and assuming you haven't died yet, symptoms will
start to fade, though you can look forward to large amounts of swelling in the affected
area for several more days.
Black widows may be painful, but they don’t even hold a candle to our next entry on this
list.
Irukandji Jellyfish Jellyfish are simple creatures.
They have almost no measurable intelligence, and their entire hunting strategy consists
of floating around aimlessly The Irukandji takes everything that’s awful
about jellyfish and cranks it up to eleven.
Jellyfish are notoriously difficult to see and avoid already, and the Irukandji doubled
down on that and became even smaller and more difficult to see.
The bell is only about 5 to 25 millimeters (.20 inch to .98 inch) wide, but the tentacles
can extend up to a meter (3.3 feet) in length.
While other jellyfish only have stingers on the tentacles, the Irukandji was kind enough
to line even its bell with stingers, you know, so there’s absolutely no chance of avoiding
getting stung if you run into one.
Despite its tiny size, Irukandji jellyfish pack one of the biggest venomous wallops in
the world, and is generally accepted as being the most painful sting in mother nature.
The initial sting is only mildly painful, and leads most swimmers to believe they ran
into a common jellyfish.
However, within minutes as the venom circulates through the body, the real nightmare begins.
Painful muscle cramps first hit the arms and legs, which can lead to drowning.
As the venom makes its way to the organs, the kidneys pulsate with pain akin to that
of a kidney stone, while the back begins to spasm.
Waves of fiery pain course through the body as nausea, headaches, uncontrolled sweating
and vomiting kick in.
The heart begins to race uncontrollably, leading to serious problems for those with pre-existing
heart conditions.
Hospitalization is absolutely necessary for an Irukandji sting, and even the most powerful
narcotic painkillers have been widely reported to be completely ineffective.
Victims must simply ride out the pain as hospitals try and make them as comfortable as possible.
Perhaps the most terrifying part though is the way the venom causes psychological feelings
of doom and despair, leading to suicidal thoughts and depression.
At least Irukandji jellyfish have the decency of trying to kill you- our next entry will
leave holes in your body if it gets its fangs inside you.
Brown Recluse Warning, this next entry contains some disturbing
images.
Spiders are basically the jellyfish of land- they’re often extremely venomous, difficult
to see, and there’s probably one working its way up your pant leg right now but you
probably think we’re kidding and you’re just feeling a random tickle.
If it’s a brown recluse on your leg though, you’d better start making arrangements to
get to the hospital.
A bite from a brown recluse is typically painless, though you’ll start to feel very tender
around the bitten area within a few hours.
The area will quickly become inflamed, with burning pain setting in.
If you’re lucky, this is as bad as it’ll get- but most people are not lucky when it
comes to brown recluse spiders.
For the unlucky victims, necrosis will set in around the affected area, as the venom
destroys the surrounding tissues.
Typically this begins with a very large blister, then an ulcer will start to develop.
Over the course of one or two weeks, the ulcer grows by inches, and dead tissue begins to
blacken and scab on the wound.
Within three weeks the bite will finally begin to heal, but can take up to 3 months to fully
heal.
Depending on the location you were bitten, you may need skin grafts or full-on reconstructive
surgery to recover from the massive tissue death- and you’ll likely carry a significant
scar or deformity for the rest of your life.
Some victims may even need a limb amputation.
Brown recluses only sting defensively, but our next entry doesn’t just pack one of
the most painful stings in the world, it can fly and chase down its victims.
Tarantula Hawk No, it’s not a spider that can fly like
a hawk- even that’s too terrifying for nature to come up with.
Instead, the tarantula hawk is a species of wasp that lives to prey on spiders.
If you live in the southern United States or South and Central America, you’re smack-dab
in this species’ habitat.
Tarantula Hawks like to hunt down spiders and inject them with venom that paralyzes
them.
The wasp then drags the spider into a hole and plants its egg inside of it.
The growing young promptly hatches and feeds on the still-living spider, kind of like a
really slow-acting xenomorph.
In humans, the venom isn’t strong enough to paralyze, but it’s more than enough to
create one of the most painful experiences of your life.
American entomologist Justin Schmidt, who has dedicated his life to the creation of
the Schmidt sting pain index, has this to say about the tarantula hawk’s sting: all
you can do is lay down and scream.
The good news is that the pain only lasts for about 5 minutes, the bad news is that
this will definitely be the most painful five minutes of your life- other than the last
time you tried to do something special in the bedroom for your significant other only
to be a complete disappointment.
And that is an Infographics sting, with pain that can last from minutes to a lifetime.
Our next entry is not only so well camouflaged that many people get stung by accident each
year, but the pain of even a glancing sting can last for years.
Stonefish
Its camouflage is almost perfect, and 13 deadly spines line its body to ward off would-be
predators.
Unfortunately for humans, those same spines routinely end up piercing the bottom of swimmers
feet fairly regularly.
For its victims, there's few experiences in life more painful than getting stung by a
stonefish.
One swimmer stung by a stonefish in Australia managed to accidentally nick one with a finger,
and that was more than enough to bring on a nightmare of pain that would last years.
Stung on a finger, the pain was immediate and intense, described as having a sledgehammer
smash into each knuckle, the wrist, the elbow and then up to the shoulder for an entire
hour after the sting.
After that, the venom went to work on the kidneys, causing so much pain that the victim
couldn’t stand or sit straight up, and was forced to remain doubled over in crippling
agony.
For him, as with most victims, the pain would take years to go away, with recurring kidney
pain striking long after the initial sting.
And that was just a glancing blow on a single spine.
Divers who have stepped onto a stonefish and experienced several of the spines piercing
their body have experienced pain so intense they’ve begged for their limbs to be amputated.
Now that’s just one more reason to leave the ocean to the jellyfish in our opinion.
Now go watch Scientists finally know why mosquitoes bite some people more than others.
Or click this video instead!