In a shocking incident, a TikTok user narrowly escaped death after licking a deadly sea creature he found on a beach for a video.
The man, who goes by the title of Alexa_reed2 on TikTok, made a video and shared it with his followers, thinking the creature was a jellyfish. He revealed he had found the creature after it washed ashore.
In the clip, shared by LadBible, the man is seen approaching the sea creature, which looks like a transparent float with long tentacles. Mistaking it for a jellyfish, he picked the creature up and started playing with it.
"Look guys, a jellyfish is still here," he is heard saying in the video, adding that the creature is cold, "I'm going to pick it up." He then is seen pinching the creature between his fingers and saying: "This is how it looks like. Yes, it's a jellyfish, look how big it is. And it's still moving, oh my god, I'm going to lick it."
Other TikTok users responded to the video saying the man was lucky to have survived as the creature was a venomous marine animal known as the floating terror or Portuguese Man O' War.
"That is not a jellyfish, it's a Portuguese Man O' War, also known as the bluebottle, also known as the floating terror. It's a species of siphonophore armed with millions of explosive stinging cells powerful enough to make Nemo an orphan and occasionally turn a person into past tense," a Tiktoker who goes by the name Mndiaye_97 replied to the man's post, according to Report Wire.
"This Man O' War is responsible for up to 10,000 stings a year in Australia alone and the venom can cause excruciating pain for up to three days, leaving a nasty, whip-like welt as a souvenir. But honestly, you're lucky if that's all you get because the venom can trigger an allergic-like reaction that results in throat-swelling, heart issues and difficulty breathing, as you suffocate, possibly to death," he said.
The user went on to add: "But honestly, you're lucky if that's all you get because the venom can trigger an allergic-like reaction that results in throat-swelling, heart issues and difficulty breathing, as you suffocate, possibly to death... And fun fact: not only can they write your obituary, even tentacles that have been separated from its body contain enough venom to incapacitate you."
This is a representational image. Photo: Pixabay (CC0)
