A snorkeler says he is lucky to be alive after finding a beautiful ‘souvenir’ in the sea.
The diver, named ‘Frank,’ was exploring Egypt’s Red Sea when he came across a beautifully colored shell. He picked up the shell and took a picture to capture the moment.
But months after his vacation, Frank realized what he thought was a harmless sea creature was actually a venomous cone snail.
Cone snails, which live in stunningly patterned shells, have a toxin that can paralyze or kill a human within one to five hours if untreated. It takes only milliseconds to seconds for the snail to take down its prey.
It has a harpoon-like tooth that allows it to rapidly sting prey, allowing the snail to stab predators and quickly flee from danger.
Once Frank, who has kept his last name private, learned he nearly avoided death, he shared the experience in a Reddit post entitled ‘How lucky I am to be still alive?’
‘I thought I just found a very pretty seashell and was thinking about taking it home as a souvenir, but I noticed it’s still alive, feeling some weight and movement inside, so I decided to at least take some pictures of it,’ the diver wrote on Reddit.
So, seeing that the cone snail was likely very much alive and in his hand, marine wildlife specialists believe Frank dodged a major bullet – and hundreds of Reddit users agreed.
Reddit user AArdvarkPaws, who said his name is Frank, shared an image of his encounter with what looks like a textile cone snail while snorkeling in the Red Sea
Experts note that cone snails include hundreds of different species and every one of them is considered poisonous
‘I actually had no idea about that thing being potentially deadly until months later when I randomly stumbled upon a picture of a very similar cone snail online, the texture was very distinctive, and I remembered that’s what I held,’ Frank told DailyMail.com.
‘That led me to a Wikipedia article on cone snails and that’s where I found the first indication that cone snails might actually be deadly.’
In his post, Frank asked social media users to help him confirm the identity of the mysterious snail he picked up and filmed with a GoPro camera.
Redditors quickly pointed out that it was indeed a poisonous cone snail – specifically, a textile cone snail.
These animals mostly live in the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea is one of its inlets. The Aquarium of the Pacific, a conservation nonprofit, calls textile cone snails ‘one of the most venomous creatures on Earth.’
‘Dodged a NUKE,’ one person wrote on Frank’s post.
However, one Reddit user likely said it best, writing, ‘If it’s a cone, leave it alone.’
‘I found what they said very helpful, although some of it terrifying,’ Frank said.
The Divers Alert Network explains that there are roughly 600 species of cone snails in the world and every single one is poisonous.
If one of these creatures has the opportunity, it’ll strike by extending a long flexible tube called a proboscis which contains the venomous tooth (or radula).
Cone snails have a long tube which extends from their bodies and carries a harpoon-like tooth that injects their victims with venom
If someone is stung by a cone snail, the wound will quickly give the victim mild or moderate pain and begin to swell up.
After that, the toxic venom moves into the nervous system and can lead to paralysis, respiratory failure, or death. This is how cone snails capture fish and worms to eat.
Unfortunately, there is also no specific treatment for a cone snail sting. First aid focuses on controlling the victim’s pain, but this may not lead to better outcomes for the patient.
The lucky diver admitted he was more worried about encountering a shark or jellyfish while snorkeling, adding that ‘I’ll certainly never pick one up again.’
Frank told DailyMail.com that he’s also taken many of the Reddit comments to heart and has altered how he plans his hiking and diving trips, including doing online searches to see what dangerous plants and animals are living in the regions he visits.
‘It kept my mind at ease after encountering snakes while hiking, for example, knowing that no venomous snakes are present in that particular region,’ Frank said.
As of Friday, the February 18 Reddit post has been upvoted (liked) over 4,900 times and has received more than 300 comments.
People posting to r/animalid regularly submit pictures of their encounters with animals or even paw prints in everyday setting. The channel currently has 273,000 subscribers and is listed as being in the top 1 percent of subreddits.
As for Frank’s discovery in the Red Sea, commenters and experts both agree that the best thing for divers to do is to never touch anything.
‘You shouldn’t be picking anything up in the sea. For your own safety and the marine life’s,’ another Reddit user added.
