Top 10 Beautiful Aquatic Lifeforms that Can Kill You

All that glitters is not gold. They can be carnivorous, they can be venomous, and they kill. So think twice before getting attracted to a pretty creature you just saw at the beach.



10. Australian Box Jellyfish

Box jellyfish most visibly differ from the “true” jellyfish in that their umbrellas are cubic, rather than domed or crown-shaped. Box jellyfish can not only move more rapidly than other jellyfish due to their slightly different structure but are also significantly more beautiful as they are almost transparent. You dive and see this magnificent beauty (or even if you don’t see) then don’t dare to touch it because the box jellyfish has been called “the world’s most venomous creature”, though only a few species in the class have been confirmed to be involved in human deaths. It is a sea wasp, the Australian box jellyfish can have up to sixty tentacles, each 15-foot long and with enough venom to kill 60 people.



9. Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish

It is a small beautiful 3.1 inch (8 centimeter) aquatic organism exhibiting radiant charm and velvety appearance. The dorsal surface of its cuttlebone is yellowish and evenly convex. The texture throughout is smooth, lacking bumps or pustules making it one of the most beautiful life forms in marine. It occurrs in tropical Indo-Pacific waters off northern Australia and southern New Guinea. Don’t try to cuddle this cuttlefish. Though charming and colorful, this aptly named fish’s displays are meant as a warning. Although they rarely encounter humans, its poison is considered extremely toxic and can be as lethal as the poison of the blue-ringed octopus.



8. Bottlenose Dolphin

This cannot be right. These guys save humans. Every other year or so, some diver or something gets lost out at sea, these guys bring them home. Dolphins have been compared to humans on a number of fronts. They are intelligent, communicate with each other, have the ability to learn, do tricks, play jokes, and can almost use their fins as hands. What’s not to love? Some people even believe they have special healing powers. Swimming with dolphins can be a therapeutic and enlightening experience. It may be their eyes, their smiling face, their playful nature or their intelligence, but dolphins have won their way into our hearts. Dolphins can be violent. Not only have they been known to kill and maim their own young, they also kill porpoises and play with their dead carcass for no apparent reason other than its fun. Male dolphins particularly show aggression towards human males when there’s a female involved. Why? Sexual competition. They may also drown your wife while attempting to steal her away and mate with her. In 2002 CNN reported that an amorous dolphin was targeting swimmers in Weymouth, England. Swimmers were being warned to stay away from the dolphin because “When dolphins get sexually excited, they try to isolate a swimmer, normally female. They do this by circling around the individual and gradually move them away from the beach, boat or crowd of people.” When dolphins get sexually aroused, they become rough. The swimmer may not be able to escape from the 400 lbs animal and drown. And in 1994, a male Bottlenose off the coast of San Paolo, Brazil, that was noted to be fond of female human swimmers attacked a pair of human males that the dolphin apparently considered to be competition and killed one of them.



7. Stonefish

Known as the most venomous fish in the world, the stone fish lives on the bottom of the reefs, camouflaged as a rock. It lives above the Tropic of Capricorn but can be found in the Queensland Great Barrier Reef as well. It’s venom comes from the dorsal area, that is lined with 13 spines, causing shock, paralysis and tissue death depending on the severity of the sting. First aid consists of immobilizing the venom by bandaging the affected area then applying a hot compress. The pain is said to be so excruciating that it lead to amputating the affected limb.



6. Giant King Squid

Giant King Squid is categorized as the highest mollusks in the kingdom of the invertebrate. Its eyes resemble a human’s eyes. It has 10 arm-like tentacles and when it stretches out its body its length can extend to as long as 65 feet. People always confuse it with an octopus. Unlike Giant King Squid, the octopus only attacks people when it feels a threat from a human. On 25 March, 1941, the British ship immersed into the Atlantic Ocean. When 10 of the survivors from the ship were about to get caught of one lifeboat, all of a sudden the Giant King Squid emerged to the surface of the ocean. It stretched out its arm-like tentacles to capture two of the survivors’ bodies tightly while triggering them into the bottom of the sea. It was reported that the male Giant King Squid would occasionally eat the female squid after its fertilization.



5. Hagfish

A recently discovered ancient aquatic lifeform, known as hagfish is sometimes labelled as disgusting due to its slime producing capabilities. Hagfish average about half a metre. When captured and held e.g. by the tail, they secrete the microfibrous slime, which expands into a gelatinous and sticky goo when combined with water; if they remain captured, they can tie themselves in an overhand knot which works its way from the head to the tail of the animal, scraping off the slime as it goes and freeing them from their captor, as well as the slime. While marine worms on or near the sea floor are a major source of nutrition, hagfish can feed upon and often even enter and eviscerate the bodies of any injured creature much larger than themselves. They are known to devour their victims from the inside. Recently a few couple of cases have been noted when human deadbodies were found in sea shaped like a stocking without any mass. The predator was found to be hagfish.



4. Moral Eels

Moray eels mostly live in salt water. They can grow upto 4 meters in length. The body of Moray Eel generally patterned. Camouflage is also present inside the mouth. Their jaws are wide, framing a protruding snout. They possess large teeth, designed to tear flesh as opposed to holding or chewing. Morays hide from humans and would rather flee than fight. Morays are shy and secretive, and attack humans only in self-defense or mistaken identity (for example, a finger placed in a crevice where a moray resides may resemble a prey-item). Most attacks involve accidental bites during human-initiated interaction. Morays cannot see very well and rely mostly on their acute sense of smell.



3. Puffer Fish

These funny looking Puffer fish are the second most poisonous vertebrates on earth after the Golden Poisonous frog. The puffer’s skin and certain internal organs are highly toxic to humans. Deadly poison called Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is contained Puffer fish. Toxins are more powerful than cyanide resulted in difficulty in breathing on a person before leading to death. Still in some parts of Japan and Korea chef’s remove the poisonous part and meat allowing it to be served as meal.



2. Lionfish

A Lionfish is one of the venomous fish which looks beautiful yet dangerous. The Lion fish have long and separated spines and have a generally striped appearance red, green, navy green, brown, orange, yellow, black, maroon, or white. Divers should be extremely cautious and avoid contact with the venomous spikes of the Lionfish. Usually, Lionfish are not aggressive toward humans and will almost always keep their distance. In addition, their stings are not very deadly, but they are still very painful.



1. Blue Ringed Octopus

The blue ringed octopus is tiny and beautiful. Its amazing rings flash a rich fluorescent blue. An individual blue-ringed octopus tends to use its dermal chromatophore cells to camouflage itself until provoked, at which point it quickly changes color, becoming bright yellow with blue rings or lines. Should you run across this tiny vividly colored octopus, you may think to grab it to take home to your salt water tank. Grabbing it for your salt tank might be a deadly mistake. The blue-ringed octopus is 5 to 8 inches, but its venom is powerful enough to kill humans and there is no blue-ringed octopus anti-venom available. They pounce on their prey, paralyze them with venom and use their beaks to tear off pieces. They then suck out the flesh from the body. Once bitten, the fast acting poison leads to loss of sight, taste and touch immediately. Without quick treatment, the paralysis will cause asphyxial death because of respiratory paralysis.






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