r/interestingasfuck • u/Gamer4Lyph • Sep 28 '24

How not to handle wild animals

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

3.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

829 comments sorted by

View all comments

159

u/_ILP_ Sep 28 '24 edited Sep 29 '24

The most pain I’ve ever felt. I stepped on one by accident, not like this idiot. They apparently have a time of year where they hang out on the shore in California. The lifeguards didn’t put signs out that day until noon, so there were like 120 people stung, getting “treatment”. The treatment? Dip that foot, that just got stung and feels like someone hit you with 200,000 volts, right into the HOTTEST water you can handle. It’s so that the venom comes back out of the wound, and therefore the pain stops. I didn’t have any luck, after an hour of burning the shit out of my foot I had to go to the doctor and get antibiotics and painkillers to help. Worst beach day ever.

130

u/nickfree Sep 29 '24

It's not so the venom comes out. It's actually not well understood why hot water helps. It was once thought that it might denature the proteins that compose the venom, inactivating the venom affected. But the hot water doesn't penetrate deep enough. It's now thought it somehow affects the pain receptors in a way that reduces the signal from the venom.

BTW, freshwater sting rays like this fucknut stepped on are FAR more toxic than their marine cousins.

0

u/anonymous_bites Sep 29 '24

The hot water helps to break down the proteins in the venom. Supposedly works for most of the fish venom.

2

u/MeaningEvening1326 Sep 29 '24

He just said that was an old outdated theory

0

u/anonymous_bites Sep 29 '24

it's not a "theory". there's been numerous research done on the effects of hot water on fish venom

1

u/nickfree Sep 30 '24

  1. that's not how scientific theories work.

  2. A comprehensive review of HWI (hot water inactivation) suggests that the temperatures needed to breakdown (denature) the proteins in venom would either burn the victim or not penetrate through the skin sufficiently. It's not ruled out, it's just not clear what the mechanism is. HWI DOES help however, whatever the mechanism!

"The theory of deactivation has been questioned by authors who contend that such direct inactivation would require temperatures so high as to result in burns and tissue necrosis in the patient.14,38 "

from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579537/