Criteria for this Disparate Collection

There many ways to create sub-sets of creatures, and this grouping was inspired by an incident in the Florida Keys where I was introduced to one of these creatures the hard way. I was a college kid on spring break, and in all the years hence I have never experienced that level of pain.

Here are the criteria I settled on: 1) the creature’s interaction with a human must be unbearably painful, but rarely if ever deadly; 2) the animal does not prey on humans.

The Giant Centipede

Like all centipedes, it favors warm, wet places. This arthropod is red to maroon in color and, belying its name, has 46 (not 100) yellow-tinted legs. Its claim to fame is its size; a mature adult can be 12 inches long. It may be found along the Amazon, in Trinidad and Jamaica.

In my native Michigan, birds feast on centipedes, but this variety turns the tables, eating birds, frogs, mice and lizards. It will also climb to the roof of a cave, where it can snag bats in mid-flight. It could not do this if the poison it injects into its prey was not highly potent.

The giant centipede would just as soon avoid contact with man, but if you spend a day reaching into rotting logs you will eventually get nailed. The poison from this species will not kill a healthy adult but will cause sharp pain, swelling, chills, fever, and generalized weakness. That’s not my idea of a good time.

The Toothpick Fish

If you ask locals living along stretches of the Amazon River which creature they would most wish to avoid contact with, the answer may surprise you. After all, the Amazon plays host to a variety of pernicious animals, including Piranha and gigantic anaconda. Yet the most frequent answer is the toothpick, or pencil fish, a variety of catfish that is very small and thin. It is also a parasite with lousy eyesight, which is why locals fear and detest it.

The toothpick fish dwells on the murky river bottom, using its acute sense of smell to detect prey, which are other fish. Fish not only use their gills to capture oxygen from the water, but to expel ammonia and urea. Guided by the odor, the toothpick fish burrows into its prey’s gills, secures itself by deploying an array of spines, bites into an artery, and drink’s the blood until sated. Normally, this is not a survivable event for the victimized fish. So how can this tiny fish hurt a human? Consider the facts that it does not see well, is one of the smallest vertebrates on the planet, and is attracted to prey by the scent of liquid waste, then imagine the worst that could come of this.

That’s right. Since the dawn of time male humans have urinated while cooling off in bodies of water. Do this in an area inhabited by toothpick fish and you are rolling the dice. The fish may follow the scent of urea and quickly burrow its way into the source. Even if the tail of the fish is still visible, it cannot be pulled out due to its backward facing spines. It will inch its way up the urethra and seek a blood vessel to gnaw into.

The victim of this attack, already in unimaginable pain, has few options. If he decides to stay in the water until the fish’s bloodlust has been satisfied, he will discover that a bloated toothpick fish is too large to exit the way it came in. If he leaves the river with the fish up his penis it will begin to thrash about in panic because it can’t breathe.

Men have been said to castrate themselves to end the pain. Others have allegedly taken an herbal remedy that allows the fish to be removed by killing it and making it retract its spines.

Such attacks on humans are probably very rare, and were thought by the medical community to be mythology until the case of Silvio Barbossa. This young man claimed to have been “thigh deep” in water when a toothpick fish leaped at him and buried itself in his penis. He suffered three agonizing days before presenting to a hospital, where urologist Dr. Anoar Samad surgically removed the fish.

So if you ever visit the Amazon, well, go behind a bush.

The Bullet Ant

This variety of ant can be found as far north as Nicaragua and as far south as Paraguay. It is not called the bullet ant because it’s shaped like a bullet, but because its sting feels like the victim has been shot. According to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, it is ranked as most painful.

This ant’s sting is described as “waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours.” Enough said.

The Japanese Giant Hornet

This creature makes its hives in the mountains of Japan. While no hornet sting is a pleasant experience, this hornet makes my list due to its size and the potency of its sting. This insect is 2 inches long with a wingspan of 3 inches. It can fly up to 60 miles with an estimated speed approaching 25 mph.

The giant hornet will not sting unless provoked, but if it does its quarter-inch stinger will pump venom that can dissolve human tissue. The pain from such a sting is described as “excruciating.”

About 40 people die of giant hornet stings annually, and though most of these had a severe allergic reaction to venom, some may have blundered into a nest and taken multiple stings.

The Portuguese Man-of-War

These creatures inhabit warm water seas. They resemble jellyfish but they are not. Each creature is a colony of four varieties of specialized polyps and medusa-like creatures. They have a blue crown that floats on the surface and is shaped somewhat like an old Portuguese ship, hence the name.

Like the jellyfish, the Man-of-War has stinging tentacles, which have been found as long as 165 feet, but on average are three feet in length.

On the third day of a spring break in the Florida Keys I already had a nasty sunburn, especially on my back. Then, while snorkeling, I swam under a Man-of-War. It felt like being thrashed on the neck and back by stinging nettles, Theoretically, the stings cause severe pain, leaving whip-like welts on the skin that endure for two or three days; the pain should begin to subside after one hour. Actually, the pain lasts longer if your back has already been cooked by the sun. I spent the rest of that day and all of the next drinking Pina Coladas and having aloe lotion rubbed on my back by a sympathetic female friend.

Then I was snorkeling again, but keeping an eye out for those blue balloons.

So now you know. The old adage applies: ‘To be forewarned is to be forearmed,’