How exactly does a stingray kill you if the barb goes into you?

Answer 1

Here's what I found on Wikipedia....

Dasyatids (sting rays) are common in tropical coastal waters throughout the world, and there are fresh water species in Asia , Africa, and Florida. Most dasyatids are neither threatened nor endangered.

Their stinger is a razor-sharp, barbed or serrated cartilaginous spine which grows from the ray's whip-like tail (like a fingernail). It is coated with a toxic venom. This gives them their common name of stingrays, but that name can also be used to refer to any poisonous ray.

Dasyatids do not attack aggressively, or even actively defend themselves. When threatened their primary reaction is to swim away. However, when they are attacked by predators or stepped on, the barbed stinger in their tail is mechanically whipped up, usually into the offending foot; it is also possible, although less likely, to be stung "accidentally" by brushing against the stinger. Contact with the stinger causes local trauma (from the cut itself), pain and swelling from the venom, and possible infection from parts of the stinger left in the wound, as well as from seawater entering the wound.

It is possible for ray stings to be fatal if they sever major arteries, are in the chest or pelvic region, or are improperly treated. Their stingers are normally ineffective against their main predator, sharks.

Answer 2

Before I begin let me just add one more shrimp on the barbie.

If the barb goes into you, death can occur in more ways than one. Location, location! That will always be a primary consideration.

Immediate death can occur due to a stab in the heart of even the brain because the barb injects a powerful nerve toxin that causes not only pain but paralysis as well. For your information, nerve toxins are also found in jellyfish and sea urchins.

Should the victim react to the stab by pulling the barb out, then he/she is in for something worse because the barb is actually like a jagged spike with razor sharp edges that can tear through flesh. Thus it can easily sever a major artery and led to unstoppable bleeding. So bleeding to death would be another possibility.

People with very low threshold could easily succumb to the excrutiating pain caused by the nerve toxin. While some go into shock, others may suffer from a heart attack as a result of the trauma.

Those are the immediate results, the barb is also liberally coated with highly infectious organisms and unless immediate medical attention is given, it is almost guaranteed that the wound will fester into gangrene. Whether this will also lead to death depends only on the location and physical condition of the patient.

Now time to fetch the cooked shrimp and add another one on the barbie.

Answer 3

Impossible, as it is to travel to the future. Traveling to the past would be also EXTREMLY dangerous, at least, that's what it seems to me. Because if you modify the past, let's say you talked to someone in 1077, maybe he'll never meet the person he was supposed to meet, so he won't have children with her/him and thousands of descendants will never have exist in 2013! That's a little crazy, it gives me headaches. But there would be "in theory" a way to see into the past. If we could create a very fast ship a little faster than the light (which is impossible, but let's say), well, if you travel space with this ship and then look at the earth with a super telescop, than you would see the earth some days/years before you left (because the light takes a certain time to come). But in practic it's pretty impossible :P. It's the same as the Sun. We see the sun as he was 8 minutes ago. For the stars, it's many years ago. Maybe sometimes we look at stars that doesn't even exist anymore! Anyways, have a good day (and hope you won't get too much headaches)

Answer 4

It generally doesn't.




Oh yeah - I suppose if you got the stingray barb through your eye and into your brain

or into your chest and caused a sucking chest wound (unlikely because it is so small) or penetrate so deeply that it injured heart or major vessels


Or if you got an overwhelming infection in your foot and you ignored it and you got gangrene and died of infection


or if you were hideously allergic to sting ray toxin


or if it was an ALIEN stingray






Irwin probably tried to do something to the baby stingray - you know how he is!

He is the 3rd recorded death EVER to be attributed to stingrays. Death from stingray is very very rare.

Oh and here's a local news article about it.

Answer 5

How Do Stingrays Sting

Answer 6

The barb did not go through his heart.

Stingrays can get HUGE, and that barb is hard and sharp and it has venom on it.

Answer 7

Steve Irwin died From Cardiac Arrest do to the Barb stuck in his chest... so the barb didnt kill him but it was the main contributing factor

Answer 8

Anywhere is lethal in the chest. Including the heart the chest has pulmonary arteries all though out it in which they lead directly to the heart from the lungs, drowning, embolisms, etc. For example if he had gotten a pulmonary arteries pierced it would be just as lethal as getting it directly in the heart.

http://images.fotosearch.com/bigcomps/LIF/LIF113/SA201029.jpg



we all knew it would happen sooner or later/ be honest when you f with animals you shouldn't be this will happen

Answer 9

poison in the barb

Answer 10

Right through the heart, reportedly. Crikey!!!