Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin Killed:
Australian naturalist and television personality Steve Irwin has been killed by a stingray during a diving expedition off the Australian coast.Mr Irwin, 44, died after being struck in the chest by the stingray's barb while he was filming a documentary in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.
"Stingrays only sting in defence, they're not aggressive animals so the animal must have felt threatened. It didn't sting out of aggression, it stung out of fear," Dr Bryan Fry, Deputy Director of the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne said....
Experts say that while painful, stingray venom is rarely lethal and it would have been the wound caused by the barb itself, which could measure up to 20cm long, which proved fatal.
"What happened to Steve Irwin is like being stabbed in the heart. It has little to do with the venom and all to do with the trauma caused by the barb of the stingray," Dr Geoff Isbister, a clinical toxicologist at the Mater Hospital in Newcastle, Australia, said.
News.com.au Obituary
BBC Obituary
This cries out for some kind of wry joke, probably a pun of some kind, but you'll have to read some other blog for that. I got nuthin.'
From the WaPo:
Stainton said Irwin's American-born wife Terri, from Eugene, Ore., had been informed of his death, and had told their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.
I always thought he knew what he was doing! His poor family.
When I lived in the South Pacific, they said Stingrays were dangerous, not because of the poison, but that their stingers contained an anticoagulant, and people in the water could bleed to death very quickly. My mother said that if you are diving, you were supposed to keep white vinegar with you to neutralise the effect of that reaction.
There was also a danger when you received any type of cuts, the sea water could cause a great infection. We knew of someone who had a shaving cut, went swimming and contracted a very bad infection almost immediately.
Every episode, you always wondered if he was going to survive or not. It is tragic, there will never be another Croc hunter.
I'm actually shocked by this news because of how he died. I thought it would have been a crocodile or a snake to do him in, but a stingray, and with a barb right throught to his heart? That's just unbelievable and random. I'm so sad for his family. :( My kids absolutely loved Steve's shows.
Patty,
Everyone I talk to says the same thing, they thought it would have been by a snake or a croc!
The barb through his heart is just so freaky!