The deadliest (and easy to miss) critters lurk in dark silence, ready to strike with either the barest of warnings or none at all - and with absolutely fatal venom.
Some you've heard about, and so sit there and scoff. Yeah, big deal: rattlesnake, cobra, black widow -- either you can hear them coming, avoid going to India, or simply not stick your hands into dark places. They are nothing but annoyances: fatal only to the truly stupid, or very sick... But there are others, nasty little things
as vicious and deadly as they are quiet and unassuming.
据国外媒体24日报道，对人来说，世界上有太多太多容易致命的动物，但有些动物不仅会对人发动致命攻击，而且静静地潜伏在暗处，不易被发现，时刻准备向入侵者发起攻击。以下是它们中的6位代表： 1.鸡心螺(Cone Snail)：可在4分钟内夺去你的生命
鸡心螺
鸡心螺
你非常开心地在海边散步，愉快地捡起一些更漂亮的贝壳，并丢掉稍逊一些的贝壳，乐此不疲地寻找一颗最适合装饰你的办公桌的贝壳。然而，在没有任何预警的情况下，你突然感觉手被其中一只贝壳扎了一下，最初感到阵阵剧烈的刺痛，后来这种刺痛逐渐变得令人难以忍受，而且痛感不断蔓延。鸡心螺用带倒勾的刺快速刺向你，瞬间功夫已经将现有最毒的神经毒素注入到你的体内。
1. The Cone Snail: can kill you in less than 4 minutes
Say, for instance, you are happily walking through the low surf merrily picking up and discarding shells, looking for just the right one to decorate your desk back at the office.
With no warning at all, however, you feel a sharp sting from one of those pretty shells -- a sting that quickly flares into a
crawling agony. With that quick sting, the
cone snail's barbed spear has insidiously injected you with one of the most potent neurotoxins in existence.
"The bright colors and patterns of cone snails are attractive to the eye, and therefore people sometimes pick up the live animals and hold them in their hand for a while."Meanwhile the snail may fire its harpoon, loaded with venom (the harpoon can penetrate gloves and even wetsuits)
Nerves short-circuited by this infinitesimally small amount of juice, in seconds the agony of where the stinger struck has faded into a heavy numbness. A relief, perhaps, but then it spreads and moments later the paralysis has seized the entire limb. Then the breathing troubles start ... and then, simply, your heart stops beating.
Yes, there are antivenoms available, but, frankly, with something that can
kill in less than four minutes
you'd have to carry it in your back pocket to survive. It wasn't just for their fondness for these pretty shells that lead the CIA to develop a weapon using this venom to dispatch enemies.
We'll be back to the ocean in a few paragraphs, but for the next dangerous denizen we have to visit the steaming Amazon:
2.箭毒蛙：接触即可致命
箭毒蛙
箭毒蛙
例如，箭毒蛙静静地蹲在那里，它们是一些颜色艳丽的微小树蛙。它们看起来像一些装饰品，箭毒蛙是绿叶中的一抹红。然而如果接触到它，你可能会在大约几分钟内丧命。前一刻你或许还在灌木丛中尽情玩耍，下一刻你可能就会躺在地上，身体抽搐不止，口吐白沫。这种毒蛙夺人性命的工具不是毒刺，不是用嘴巴咬，也不是毒液，覆盖在它们鲜艳的身体上的明晃晃的黏液就足以要了你的命。它们是已知的世界上唯一一种能通过接触杀死人的动物。它们跳跃的高度可达2英寸。
2. Poison Arrow Frog: Lethal Touch
That frog over there, for instance: that tiny, brilliantly colored tree frog. Doesn't he look like some kind of Faberge ornament, there against that vermilion leaf? Wouldn't such a natural jewel look just gorgeous in a terrarium back home?
Pick him and you'll be dead in a matter of minutes. One second frolicking in the undergrowth, the next spasming and foaming on the jungle floor. No stinger, no bite, no venom: just the shimmering
slime
covering his brilliant body.
The natives in these parts capture these
poison arrow frogs
(carefully) and coat their blowgun darts with that slime and knock full grown monkeys out of the trees with a single strike.
"They are the only animal in the world known to be able to kill a human by touch alone." They can jump as far as 2 meters - "that's nearly 50 times their body length. That is like a 6-foot (1.8-meter) human jumping 300 feet (90 meters)"
3.昆虫世界里的懒惰小丑
昆虫世界里的懒惰小丑
昆虫世界里的懒惰小丑
这种成年蛾就是只蛾，但是毛虫身上的毛充满令人讨厌的东西，每年有很多人因为接触这些毛虫丧命。顺便说一下，被这种毛虫的毛毛刺伤的后果很不好：它们分泌的毒液是一种非常有效的抗凝血剂，随着血液不断流失，死亡将离你越来越近。
3. The lazy clown of the insect world.
Not a long distance from the deep green of the Amazon is southern Brazil. if you are a tired hiker after a good trek you'd want to rest a bit, to brace yourself against a tree for support. So what if you happen to touch a certain hairy caterpillar. It’s just a caterpillar, right? The lazy clown of the insect world. One problem, though: it happens to be a member of the
lonomia
family of moths.
The adult moth is just a moth, but the hairs of the caterpillar are juicy with nasty stuff, so nasty that dozens of people die every year from just touching them. By the way, it’s not a good way to go, either: their venom is a extremely powerful anticoagulant, death happening as the blood itself breaks down. Not fun. Very not fun.
Many powerful predators are loud, almost comical: they parade their danger; sharks announce their presence with a steady da-dum, da-dum, da-dum of background music; rattlesnakes... well, they rattle; lions, and tigers, and bears roar and bellow...
But the real monsters are more devious than that; they lurk on the other side of invisibility, never make a sound, and kill you faster than the sounding of that first note in a shark's theme song.
4.剑吻海蛇(Beaked Sea Snake)
剑吻海蛇
剑吻海蛇
另一种可怕的生物并不遵循常规，它是水栖世界奇怪的一员。你可能会根据常规经验认为蛇都生活在干旱地区。但是如果你划船在波斯湾或印度沿海岛屿周围转悠，一定要时刻警惕钩鼻海蛇(Enhydrina schistosa)激起的细碎波纹。
4. Beaked Sea Snake
Another creature of nightmares that doesn’t come with a theme song is a strange import to the aquatic world. When you think
snake
you usually think of dry land. But if you go paddling around the Persian Gulf (or coastal islands of India) keep a wary eye out for the gently undulating wave of
Enhydrina Schistosa.
It might not look dangerous, if anything it just looks odd to see a snake swimming in the sea, but don’t let your fascination for a "creature of the dry that lives in the wet" hypnotize you into getting too close.
The
Hook-nose (or beaked) sea snake, to use its less scientific name, has one of the most potent venoms known. How potent? Well, visualize 1.5 milligrams. Not easy, is it? Such a small amount. But that’s all the venom enhydrina needs to, well, leave you "swimming with the fishes", as the mob likes to say.
"The snake is also eaten as meat by Hong Kong and Singapore fishermen and locals alike"
5.石鱼(Stone Fish)静待人们踩上它
石鱼
石鱼
现在还不是离开有关海洋的话题，讨论其他话题的时候。在美丽的蓝色大海深处，有两种致命的生物会引起你的恐惧心理，让你整夜难以安然入睡。说到较大的一种，当你沿着海底浅滩散步时一定要注意脚下，因为只要你不小心踩上它，就会有致命危险。
5. Stone Fish waits for you to step on it
But it’s not time to leave the sea quite yet. There are two nasty things in the blue depths you should spend many a sleepless night frightened of. For the big one you’ll have to wait a bit, for the one right below it in terrifying lethality you just have to watch your step when you’re walking along the bottom of the ocean.
As you can see it's very hard to notice on the ocean floor:
As you can see it's very hard to notice on the ocean floor:
Like all monsters it hides, camouflaging itself among the rocks on the bottom. It’s what’s called an ambush predator: a critter that waits until something juicy walks, or swims, by. But what it could do to you requires no motion at all.
All the
stone fish
has to do is just sit there on the bottom and wait for you to innocently step on it.
That’s all it takes: the spines on the fish’s back are like a parade of loaded hypodermic needles, each one carrying enough bad stuff to kill even a buff diver in a matter of minutes. But death is not really the worst.
The pain from a stone fish’s sting is said to be so horrible that sufferers have begged to have the pricked limb amputate rather than live with it for another moment.
In a word:
Ouch!.
6.箱形水母称得上是“棺材水母”
箱形水母
箱形水母澳大利亚箱形水母是一种在澳大利亚和亚洲东南沿海可以发现的微小水母。这种水母仅有大约16英寸长，它有4个眼睛集中的地方，共有24只眼睛。箱形水母的触须上生长着数千个储存毒液的刺细胞，不仅恶意的攻击，就连贝壳或皮肤不经意的剐蹭都会刺激这些微小的毒刺。只要有谁胆敢招惹它，它就会疯狂地给任何人或东西注射已知最有效的神经毒素。就像你能够在左上方的那张图片上看到的情形一样，在野外要注意箱形水母确实相当困难。
6. Box Jellyfish should really be called the "coffin" jellyfish
Cone shells, snakes, and caterpillars can be avoided, brilliant frogs warn of their fatality, and I’ve already warned you about the stone fish, but this last terror does not roar or display its danger at all. Let's take one final swim, shall we, this time off the coast of Australia?
Paddling in the crystal sea, enjoying the cool waters, the warm sun, it's easy to miss this monster, especially as it's almost as clear as the ocean.
Chironex fleckeri
doesn't sound terrifying, does it?
Chironex fleckeri
is a tiny jellyfish, only about sixteen inches long. It has four eye-clusters with twenty-four eyes; its tentacles carry thousands of nematocysts, microscopic stingers activated not by ill-will but by a simple brush against shell, or skin. Do this and they fire, injecting anyone and anything with the most powerful neurotoxin known.
- Broken tentacles remain active until broken down by time and even dried tentacles can be reactivated if wet;
- Box jellyfish are not actually jellyfish at all; they are the Cubozoans;
- Grows to about the size of a human head, and has tentacles up to three meters long;
As you can see on the top left of the image below, it's pretty hard to notice Chironex Fleckeri in the wild:
The sting of a chironex fleckeri, also called
the sea wasp, has been described by experts as horrifying torment:
Stories abound of swimmers leaping from the cool Australian seas, skin blistered and torn from thousands of these tiny stingers, the venom scalding their bodies and plunging them into
agonizing shock.
Luckily it doesn't last long... In fact, the burning pain is over in just about the time it will take you to read this last paragraph (and you don't have to be a phenomenally slow reader), not even enough time to reach shore and call for help.
And as the venom works itself into your system, causing your nervous system to collapse, you'll realize that there really are dangerous things out there that'll kill you by pure reflex, by just crossing their paths - things that are perhaps the easiest to miss.