#10 – Catfish on a U.S. Beach In September of 2015, a video captured a woman
who had a dead catfish stuck on the back of her leg, after her friend had chased her around and
hit her with it. What started as a harmless game at a US beach ended with the catfish’s serrated
fin embedded in the woman’s limb. It was nearly impossible to remove the barbed fin without help,
because doing so, without the proper attention and tools, could’ve caused serious injuries.
The panicked woman, only identified as Tina, yelled that she was afraid of getting a disease,
as her friends scrambled trying to figure out what to do. One of them suggested to “just yank it”
out. As a crowd began to form around Tina, some onlookers proposed using pure vodka to cleanse
the wound. The video ended shortly thereafter, and no other information was available regarding the
outcome of the situation, but it was assumed that Tina ultimately got the help she needed.
#9 – Fisherman in Thailand On May the 22nd of 2022, an unidentified fisherman
in Thailand was left fighting for his life after a fish jumped out of the water and got lodged inside
his throat. The man was spearfishing, completely submerged underwater. At the same exact moment he
had come up for air, the 5-inch fish had landed into his mouth and wiggled down his throat. The
fisherman was left unable to breathe and was rushed to the hospital by others who’d noticed
the incident. An X-ray at the hospital confirmed that it was a freshwater fish called anabas,
which has spikes on both its back and stomach. It got stuck between the man’s throat and nasal
cavity, after apparently trying to “swim” out of his nose. After an hour-long operation,
doctors were able to remove the fish, and the fisherman went on to make a full recovery.
#8 – Noppadol Shringam Noppadol Shringam was swimming
at Ao Tan Koo Beach, in Thailand, when a needlefish speared him through the neck,
on March the 31st of 2022. The man, who was in his mid-30s at the time, was at the beach with
his young son. He’d thrown an inflatable toy into the water, when the needlefish jumped out and
impaled him in the neck. An expert subsequently explained that needlefish tend to swim around the
surface and are not predatory, so it was likely that the toy had startled it, causing it to
instinctively jump out of the water as a defense mechanism. With the fish dangling from his throat,
Shringam and his son called out for help. Fellow beachgoers contacted the emergency
services to take him to the hospital, for the needlefish to be surgically removed. Doctors
tried to extract the fish without harming it but were unable to do so. The fish died,
but fortunately, no major arteries were hit and Shringham was able to make a full recovery.
#7 – Fish Stuck in Man’s Rectum An unnamed 30-year-old man went
to an emergency hospital in Guangdong, China, after getting a fish stuck in his rectum and
experiencing extreme abdominal pain. X-rays and CT scans from the incident, which occurred on June
the 3rd of 2020, showed just how badly the fish was stuck. When a nurse questioned the man on how
the fish had gotten up there, he claimed to have “accidentally sat on it,” to which the hospital
worker reportedly replied, “Do you think I’m an idiot?” After performing an emergency endoscopy,
they identified the fish as a Mozambique tilapia, a species which has spiny fins. The dead fish was
too big to safely extract, and the spiky fins had ruptured the man’s large intestine. That’s when
surgeons decided that the only way to get the fish out was to cut open the man’s abdomen and
they were ultimately able to extract it from his bowels. Doctors speculated but were unable to know
for sure whether the tilapia was still alive or already dead when it had entered the man.
#6 – Russell Ching In December of 2015,
a man was pierced through the leg by a 500-pound marlin while fishing with his friends 25 miles
off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Russell Ching had been wrestling with the massive fish for nearly
two hours when he and his friends were finally able to pull it onto their boat. The marlin had
already died by that point but, upon dragging it into the boat, the fishermen lost control of its
weight. Ching was thus stabbed in the lower leg by its sharp snout. In a video of the incident, Ching
was seen laying on his back smiling and laughing at the situation, despite his injury. He later
explained that he was worried about bleeding out as his friends rushed him back to shore, which was
about a two-hour journey back. Fortunately, the fish’s snout hadn’t hit any major arteries, and
they left it in his leg to minimize the risk of bleeding out, until he was able to receive medical
assistance. He went on to make a full recovery and kept the marlin’s snout as a souvenir.
#5 – Skinny Dipping Russian Man On April the 21st of 2016, a Russian man decided
to go skinny dipping in a lake, only to be bitten on his privates by a fish. The unnamed swimmer had
gone on the trip with his friend, who filmed the incident from the shore. The latter had warned the
skinny dipper to be careful before entering the lake, pointing out that there were lots
of fish swimming around. The man dismissed the words of caution, stating that he wasn’t afraid
of them as he got in the water. Just moments later, he turned around to run out of the lake,
saying that something had bitten him. The video captured him covering his nether region as a large
fish dangled from it. He was eventually able to remove the fish and suffered no major injuries.
#4– Sanya, China On September the
1st of 2018, an unidentified man was left in agonizing pain on the beach of Sanya,
China, after a stingray had hooked its barbed tail through his shorts and latched onto his
genitals. In a video of the sickening scene, the man was seen lying on the sand by the
water with the stingray still attached to his shorts. When the emergency services arrived,
they realized that they didn’t have the equipment needed to safely unhook the barbed tail from the
man’s privates. They had to improvise with the tools they did have at their disposal
and carefully managed to extract the tail. The man went directly to the hospital with
paramedics afterwards to make sure everything was all right, and he ultimately walked away from the
situation unharmed. The stingray was believed to have died on the beach soon after being removed.
#3- Pig Kidney Transplant A team of doctors at New York University
Langone Health successfully transplanted the first pig kidney into a human, on September the 25th of
2021. After decades of researching the possible use of animal organs for life-saving transplants,
also known as xenotransplantation, scientists made a breakthrough. They were successful in
temporarily attaching a kidney from a pig into a brain dead woman, for research purposes. The
kidney for the experiment had been gene-modified and specifically engineered to remove the
sugar naturally found in pig cells that are unrecognizable to the human body, which results
in immediate organ rejection. After experimenting with the genetically modified kidney, the surgeons
found that it functioned normally and was not at risk of being rejected. The female recipient
in the experiment had wished to be an organ donor, but her organs were said to be unsuitable
for donation. For that reason, her family had agreed to allow the scientists to use her body,
stating that “there was a possibility that some good could come out of it.” Since then,
a couple of other similar experimental surgeries have taken place. One occurred within days,
on September the 30th of 2021, when doctors placed two genetically modified pig kidneys
into a brain dead 57-year-old man, who’d also chosen to be an organ donor but had
unsuitable organs. The kidneys functioned well until the study ended 3 days later.
#2 – Jensen Beach, Florida
In September of 2020, an unnamed Florida man was swimming at Jensen Beach when a small nurse shark
sank its teeth into his arm, refusing to let go. In a video recorded at the scene, the man was seen
cradling the shark like a baby and smiling while ocean and fire rescue teams struggled to detach
it. A medic tried to pry the shark’s mouth open by pulling on its upper jaw, but the shark did not
give in. In spite of his predicament, the man was cracking jokes with the other beachgoers about the
incident. He was heard saying that the bite itself didn’t really hurt, but that the shark did clench
its jaws harder every time he or one of the medics tried to release its grip. After 45 minutes,
they were finally able to get the shark off the man, who didn’t suffer any major injuries
and still held the predatory fish for a while longer after it had been released from his arm.
#1- Steve Irwin
On September the 4th of 2006, Australian documentary maker, zookeeper and wildlife
conservationist Steve Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a stingray barb while at the
Great Barrier Reef. He had been filming for a documentary and had taken a short break to snorkel
in the chest-deep water, when he saw a short-tail stingray. He swam towards the 6 and a half foot
marine creature and approached it from behind, with the intention of filming it swim away.
However, the stingray then suddenly turned and began to stab at Irwin repeatedly with its barbed
tail, striking him directly through his chest. In the immediate aftermath, Irwin had stated that
he thought to have suffered a punctured lung but, in reality, his heart had been pierced,
which caused massive internal bleeding. Crew members tried to give him CPR on their boat,
as he was rushed to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, the beloved TV personality,
whose programs had entertained millions around the world, was pronounced dead at 44 years old.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather eat a bad mussel or take a bite of a pufferfish
prepared by a moderately inexperienced chef? Let us know in the comments section below!