A 10-year-old girl has baffled experts by surviving a run-in with a highly venomous box jellyfish, the sting of which can kill an adult within minutes.
Rachael Shardlow was swimming in a river 23km upstream from the ocean in northeast Australia’s Queensland state in December when she was stung. The jellyfish’s tentacles were strapped to her limbs when her brother pulled her out of the water. She told him she couldn’t see or breathe before losing consciousness.
Surviving such a severe sting is unheard of, James Cook University zoology and tropical ecology professor Jamie Seymour said on Tuesday.
PHOTO: AFP
“I don’t know of anybody in the entire literature where we’ve studied this where someone has had such an extensive sting that has survived,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. “When I first saw the pictures of the injuries I just went, ‘you know to be honest, this kid should not be alive.’ I mean, they are horrific.”
“Usually when you see people who have been stung by box jellyfish with that number of the tentacle contacts on their body, it’s usually in a morgue,” he said.
Box jellyfish have tentacles that can reach 3m long. The sting is so excruciating that many victims go into shock and drown. Those who make it out of the water often die from the venom, which quickly attacks the heart and nervous system. Many Queensland beaches have netted enclosures to keep the creatures away from swimmers.
Shardlow has scarring and some memory loss from the attack, which happened near Gladstone, her father said.
“We’ve noticed a small amount of short-term memory loss, like riding a pushbike [bicycle] to school and forgetting she’s taken a pushbike,” Geoff Shardlow told ABC. “The greatest fear was actual brain damage, [but] her cognitive skills and memory tests were all fine.”
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