Skunk
Stelllllaaaaaaa
Was camping one time, got up to take a whiz in the middle of the night. Met the skunk at the campfire. I slowly backed up and noped out of there.
They’re basically stinky cats. I kinda want one but sadly they’re illegal here unless you buy one from a breeder.
A blue ringed octopus - they’re a cute looking tiny octopus but quite capable of killing a human.
What’s worst is that after getting bitten by one you will be mentally alert but completely unable to do anything as you feel your body just stop doing things that keep you alive (like breathing)…
as you feel your body just stop doing things that keep you alive (like breathing)…
As I understand it (and to be fair, I’m no octopus scientist or human medical doctor) it’s pretty much just breathing that’s the issue. It doesn’t really directly cause any damage on its own (though the consequences of not breathing can and will of course cause quite a lot of damage in pretty short order)
The venom causes paralysis, basically by (someone correct me if I’m wrong) clogging up the receptors your body uses to send signals to your muscles. It will all get cleared up in about 24 hours or so though.
Problem is that you use some of those muscles to breathe. But if you make it to shore (you also need some of those muscles to swim) and if you get put on a ventilator right away (to do the breathing for you,) your prognosis is actually pretty good and there’s a nearly 100% survival rate (although that has to be two of the biggest “ifs” in all of medicine)
Another thing that comes to mind is your heart also uses muscles to do its thing, and I’m not totally clear on why that doesn’t seem to be a factor here, since paralyzing those muscles is basically just instant cardiac arrest. I did a bit of googling, but I’ll be honest I was in deep over my head in medical jargon and couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. I think my takeaway is that tetrodotoxincan affect the heart muscles, but I guess for whatever reason (dosage? Different kinds of muscles? The way your body processes the venom and moves it around your body? I really don’t know) it just kind of doesn’t, which I guess is lucky for us. I’m kind of hoping someone who speak doctor will maybe see this and give an ELI5 answer to that.
I suspect there’s probably a lot of minor consequences, like I bet your next trip to the bathroom once you recover in going to be some sort of event after your bowels stopped moving for 24 hours, but otherwise it seems like if you hang out on a ventilator for a day unable to move (which, to be fair, is probably one of the last ways I’d want to spend a day, but I guess it narrowly beats out a refrigerated cubby in the morgue) you’re pretty much in the clear to get on with your life.
An anaesthesist friend of mine once told me that there are two kinds of muscles - the ones you can actively control (such as muscles in arms and legs and also the muscles for breathing) and those you cannot, such as your heart and intestine-muscles (around the gut etc.). The latter has a different kind of receptors and isn’t affected by the stuff that they use in hospitals to put you down, but since the breathing is stopped, you’ll always be intubated.
I guess this poison is of the same kind but I don’t know the technicalities…
Most big cats are extremely cute and do silly kitty-like things.
Big cats can also be more-or-less tamed if they’re raised from a very, very young age by people. The issue, most of the time, is that big cats play just like house cats, and that kind of play can easily be fatal when the cat is the same size or larger than a human. House cats aren’t actually domesticated; they’re just tame, most of the time.
There are a number of IG accounts of wild cat rescues, or other big cats that live with humans, and they’re quite friendly because they were raised with and by people. But they’re still potentially deadly.
That is part of the reason why I’d get terrified - I have a scar on my leg from a house cat. (A friend of mine brought a kitty that he just adopted here, I was holding the kitty on my arms, Kika saw it as an invader and… well, she attacked the thing nearest to the invader that she could reach, i.e. my leg.) So when I see those big cats I can’t help but imagine a 30x larger house cat, with all the dangers that it entails. And the associated cuteness.
Oh, you are absolutely right. Feral cats can fuck you up, because they have zero qualms about using ultraviolence.
We’ve only had cats for 12,000-15,000 years. We’ve had dogs for almost 200,000 years. Give them another 30,000 years and we might have actually domesticated some cats.
Otter. They’re a bunch of water gangster, they are fierce and they will bite. Even crocodiles and snake fear them when in group, human should leave them alone. Freaking cute creature though i just wanna pet one.
“Oh look, they gonna head up on him!”
Some river otters seriously fucked up a couple of women up not long ago.
The realest answer: baby bear. Because the mother is right around the corner.
Baby grizzly cub. Because if you can see the cub and not the mother…
A big cat, any of them really. They look so cute and I’d have my guard down because of how much they remind me of little cats. And then boom it’d hit me, they might be running the same Cat Brain OS but they’re capable of taking me out in one swift swipe if they wanted to and if I accidentally irked them somehow (also not having any positive attachment to humans they might not hold back). But it’d be too late, and I’d die terrified but also beholding the cute, cute kitty.
Mom had mountain lions that were abandoned as kits that she raised in the house. I fought one. I no longer have an illusions concerning big cats.
hippopotamus
There are some very cute cobras.
A wild haggis.
Nothing more dangerous than a female haggis guarding her neeps.
Aye lethal little beasties.
The Blue Ringed Octopus is a cutie. Tiny little guy, you could just scoop up with your hand… has one of the most potent toxins on earth, and there is no antidote.
Human babies
Honey Badger
Wow, nobody said sea lion yet. Cute, yes. Vicious, also yes.
Sloth. From what I’ve heard, they can move fast when they want to and will fuck people up with those claws. B
And they smile like fucking maniacs.
Bunnies. I got bit by a bunny when I was a kid. They have these sharp little teeth and it made me bleed. I’m still anxious around rabbits.
Look at the bones!
Run away!
Caerbannog?
Their talons are wicked too. Got me as w Child and now I have scars across my cheeks.
Theyre extremely faint now, but if I was any older when it happened, they’d definitely affect how stunningly beautiful I am.
Anya?
