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Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Crocodile Hunter
I'm not much of a TV watcher so I'm not as familiar with Steve Irwin as many other people are. But I am a big wildlife fan so I had come across him a few times and was sad to hear of his death Monday. I get the impression that he was maybe a bit too much of a cowboy when it came to dealing with animals but the reports I have read the last couple days paint him as a dedicated environmentalist who likely did a lot of good for a cause I believe in so maybe that's a wash. He was certainly and affable and entertaining fellow so it's no surprise he was liked by so many.
But what a way to go. I've been hit by a stingray (in the ankle while working on one of the dolphin research I've mentioned here before) and can attest to the fact that it is incredibly painful. I mean clenched teeth, can't even speak painful. And I've seen guys much bigger and tougher than me laid low, so it's not just that I'm a wimp. The initial puncture is not the worst of it, it's the toxin on the barb that eventually gets you. I remember feeling a "thunk" on my leg and pulling my foot out of the water to see a small bleeding cut right below my ankle bone. The friends with me at the time think it's funny that all I said was a mild, "ouch." I climbed onto a boat and sat there looking at it for a while thinking, "Hmm, I must not have gotten much of a hit because this doesn't seem all that bad." But as the toxin soaked in I changed my mind as by about 5 minutes later I was in more pain than I've ever felt in my life. It came and went in waves for the next several hours, one minute feeling like it was all over and the next being right back to eyes closed grimacing again. And after about 4 hours of that it was gone, like flipping off a switch. All that's left now is a nice little scar and an interesting story I can use to convince new researchers to shuffle their feet when they come to our project.
I never saw the ray that hit me but based on others we see in the same area it was likely between one and two feet across. I'm guessing the one that hit Irwin was quite a bit larger otherwise they likely wouldn't have bothered to film it for a TV show. A couple reports I read talk about rays injecting their toxin but this is incorrect. They don't have any physical mechanism for doing that and the toxin is simply contained in a slime that covers the barb on their tail. And as far as I know there are no species that produce anything that acts like a snake venom in causing muscle paralysis or effecting the nervous system. It's likely that the cause of death in Steve Irwin's case was just an old fashioned puncture wound to the chest, which makes me think it was a mistake for him to pull out the barb as several of the stories report that he did. One of the things I remember from my old EMT days was that we were told never to remove an impaled object in the field. Instead you should stabilize it and transport the person to a hospital where it can be removed in a controlled surgical environment. The shape of a stingray barb makes this even more important.
You can click on the picture to get a bigger view and you can see just how nasty these things are. The serrated edges mean that it goes in smooth but will make a terrible mess if it is pulled out backwards. Now if it had punctured deeply into his heart it may be a moot point, but chances are it did far more tissue damage coming out than it did going in. What's more, leaving an object in provides a bit of a plug to stop bleeding. Like I said, this all might be irrelevant once the full report comes out, but if you learn nothing else from 3WN today, remember, if you get jabbed in the chest with something let the professionals remove it rather than doing so yourself.
(The photo is of a barb that was cut off an 18 inch stingray by a friend of mine after it had becomes stuck in a fishing net. I kept the barb, we let the ray go, and the barb will eventually grow back. I was not able to remove all the black covering that contains the toxin. BTW, the best treatment for a stingray sting is heat between 110 and 120 degrees F. Something about the heat denatures the toxin tho I don't really understand the chemistry involved. Some people recommend peeing on the wound but that does not work unless you happen to have 120 degree urine. It is a useful treatment for some jellyfish and other marine toxins however.)
(Oops, didn't realize Hammer had already posted on the subject. I agree with him, you have to admire any person who finds so much joy in the life he is leading.)
Update
Several articles have pointed out what an extremely rare event it is for someone to be killed by a ray, which is very true. It truly was a freak accident. On the other hand it is not that rare as a cause of death for dolphins. In the population I have worked with there have been several over the years that have died that way. Usually what happens is that a barb breaks off in the dolphin's blubber and due to the serration of the barb it works it's way deeper into the body over a period of weeks or months. Eventually it penetrates the chest cavity or the intestine causing death. Many years ago while tagging a dolphin for long term observation a very skilled veterinarian we work with noticed a small scar posterior to the dolphin's skull and decided it was likely from a sting ray barb. He got a scalpel and cut in a few inches and found a 2 inch piece of barb that had been working its way in. Had he not removed it it likely would have been fatal. It was a pretty cool lesson in marine mammal medicine as he then enlarged the outside incision so that it formed a "V" with its point where the barb had lodged so that the inside would heal faster than the outside and thus squeeze out any gunk that got in the wound as it healed.
4 Comments:
heat is good for getting rid of the toxin cause the toxin is bacteria, not venom.
That's right. I'm far from an expert on the subject but as I understand it the toxin is not poisonous in the sense that snake venom is or that jellyfish or spiders are. Whether the toxin would have some localized effect where it came into direct contact with the heart musscle I don't know but I have never heard that it does anything other than cause lots of pain.. And of course in the long term infection is a big issue from any wound in a marine environment. I have no doubt the cause of death will be listed as puncture wound.
In an email a friend of mine, who is a real scientist and everything, gives a more complete explanation of why heat works on the sting ray toxin:
"Oh, the reason heating the toxin up to 110 to 120 kills its effect is the
same reason if you have an extended fever of 105 to 110 it will kill you..
Our proteins are designed to function best in a window of temps where MOST
life exists... (I say this cause you have bacteria and small organisms that
exist in hot springs and deep ocean vents and also in the ice of
antarctica)... They function because they have a specific sequence of amino
acids which cause them to fold in a certain 'evolutionarily designed" way
bringing the correct combination of amino acids together to form active
sites or sites on the molecule that allow it to interact with other
molecules (proteins etc) (of course there are exceptions to rules) so if
you heat them you change their shape and structure (denaturing) and they
lose function."
It will be a great loss for his home land. Let all remember that he has a wife and two little one left behind. For those of us that live on the rode he provided many night of interesting and educational TV. It would have been nice to work with him in FLA in the future, but no more. I can also testify that being hit by a sting ray is extremly painful. Much worse the brakeing a finger and reseting it yourself. Stover
By 
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5:46 PM
