From the bull ant sting to the 'physical torture' of the irukandji, we asked venom expert Bryan Fry to rank Australia's most painful creatures
It might be fitting that Bryan Fry's first memory is of "extraordinary, body-wide, kill-me-now" pain.
The University of Queensland professor's childhood battle with spinal meningitis forced him to learn to walk again but also left him with a fascination with all things pain-inducing.
"[It was] that early experience combined with my mum being the daughter of UN workers … living in Africa," the US-born, Australia-based venomologist says.
"I remember looking at her photo albums of cobras in the garden, a viper in their tennis court. They even had a black mamba come into their house one time."
He now studies different types of venom, their evolutions, their effects and even their potential uses.
Australia has earned its reputation for having the most dangerous animals – National Geographic even compiled a top-30 list.
The reputation has sparked some to turn to science to find out more.
Pain and fear may also be driving our interest.
"We do have a fascination with the macabre," says Professor Fry.
"There's a million deadly whatever type of animal programs out there, of varying quality … and YouTube spawns even more.
"People get interested in these animals [because of] the fact that they can mess you up."
So without further ado, here's Professor Fry's top 10 most painful stings.
People with arachnophobia should proceed with caution.
10. Bull ant
There are about 90 different species of bull ants in Australia – nine at least recorded in Sydney, according to the Australian Museum.
Their nests are underground and they'll attack anything of any size that gets too close.
The Australian Jack Jumper ant, a bigger kind, is more likely to cause a severe allergic reaction. This is where problems can arise, according to Professor Fry.
"If you look at Tasmania … it seems there's something with that species of bull ant," he says.
"It's not necessarily that there's more sting but that it seems to be a particularly allergenic one."
9. Giant water bug
These bugs live mainly in fresh water in eastern Australia and the Indo-Pacific, and can grow up to seven centimetres long.
"The sting is described as taking a six-inch nail, heating it up and driving it through the sole of your foot," says Professor Fry.
"These things are big, and they'll even feed on small turtles. They're a predator's predator."
It's worth noting that these bugs are also called Giant Fishkillers.
"It doesn't have mouth parts so essentially it stabs you with this big drinking straw, injects you with a bunch of digestive enzymes, and then sucks it up," says Professor Fry.
"It kills its prey by digesting them to death, and it really, really hurts to be digested to death."
8. Caterpillars
Caterpillars were Professor Fry's first envenomation, and the memory is lasting.
"I was the dumb monkey who picked up the slow moving animal that was brightly coloured and out during the daytime," he says.
"The really brightly coloured caterpillars of any kind are going to be the ones that are going to hurt you in some way.
"If they've got spikes, you have a pretty good idea they're venomous. If they're smooth you have a good idea they're poisonous.
"The poisonous ones are basically suicide bombers … they induce profound nausea [and] gastric pain. A bird that ate this is not going to forget it."
7. Hellfire anemone
This anemone is "exactly as much fun as it sounds", according to Professor Fry.
Its tentacles split into branches again and again, making it look a little like broccoli. Their powerful stings can cause skin ulcers on humans.
"A mate of mine [was stung] on a collecting trip and he couldn't get out of bed for three days because he was … in absolute agony.
"It's easy to see why the person who discovered it got absolutely drilled by it because it's a very pretty animal.
"It's … chemical krav maga."
6. Crown of thorns starfish
Up to 21 arms, "hundreds" of thorns and a taste for coral – that's how the Australia Institute of Marine Science describes these starfish, which they say can occur in "plague proportions".
Adults can grow up to 80 centimetres wide.
"When we were researching them, the spines were so sharp they just went through my gloves," Professor Fry says. "It just hurt."
The starfish is "commonly encountered by divers", but he says it's "not their fault".
"They're treated like this invasive species but they're native to the Barrier Reef … it's not their fault we created the perfect environment for them.
"We removed their major predators [which are] the big snails … and we weakened the defences of their major prey, the corals."
5. Redback spiders
The Australian Museum says more than 250 people stung by these spiders need antivenom every year, "with several milder envenomations probably going unreported".
"Intense local pain is the key thing here," Professor Fry says. "It's basically like putting your [genitals] onto a welding torch."
There have been no deaths reported since the 1950s, when the antivenom was introduced to Australia.
4. Stingrays
"My personal top-three most painful experiences in my life, number three is a scorpion in the amazon, number two is a stingray in Moreton Bay," Professor Fry says.
"The only thing that exceeded that stingray for me was breaking my back in three places."
Stingrays aren't aggressive, according to South Australia's Environment Department – which labels them "curious and playful animals" – but they do have a barb on the end of their tail.
It's this venomous barb, covered in flat spines made of a kind of cartilage, which Professor Fry says does the most damage.
"Unlike the stone fish, the stingray has … mechanical damage," he says.
"It's not the going in that's the problem but those barbs when they yank it back leave this jagged tear."
Fatal stings are very rare, with the most notable being the death of Australian conservationist Steve Irwin in 2006.
3. Stonefish
Masters of camouflage, stonefish have a series of spines along their back that can inject venom when stepped on.
There are two types in Australia: the reef stonefish and the estuary stonefish, which is also called the "horrid stonefish" or synanceia horrida.
"They're less potentially lethal doses than a box jellyfish, but like a box jellyfish they can kill you from the pain alone," says Professor Fry.
"People have done things like cut their fingers off to get the pain to stop.
"People lose their minds over the pain … with the stonefish, like all fish, the venom is very sensitive to heat, so it breaks down really easily.
"All you have to do is put the affected limb in water that's around 50 degrees and you're fine, that's enough to denature the venom and stop the pain."
2. Box jellyfish
The box jellyfish is named for its box-shaped "bell" or head, and it's mostly found in tropical waters along the top of Western Australia, the NT and through to Queensland.
"It takes two metres of tentacle combined contact to kill you, but they've got four nodes of tentacles," Professor Fry says.
"Each node has 15 tentacles and each tentacle can be 3-4 metres long. So if you do the maths a big box jelly can potentially have 120 lethal doses brushing against your leg."
The NT's "stinger season" officially started on October 1 last year, and is expected to continue until May 2024.
There are two ways to die from stings, says Professor Fry.
"The first is within the first two-to-five minutes with the pain, that's going to be shock," he says.
"That's all about managing blood pressure, [victims] are crashing to lethal hypotension levels.
"If they survive that, they have a chance of 20-30 minutes later dying from cardiovascular collapse from the venom's direct effects on the cardiovascular system.
"You've got this crisis period but within an hour that's passed.
"But the venom has been described as taking an iron poker, heating it up to molten levels, dipping it in acid and then whipping it as hard as you can across the person.
"They get dermonecrotic burns, which are exactly as much fun as they sound."
1. Irukandji
Extreme anxiety, shooting pains, fluid in the lungs and potential brain haemorrhage — it may be just 1-2 centimetres large but the irukandji jellyfish can have a deadly impact.
More than that, however, Professor Fry says it can be the "mental injuries" that cause far more damage.
"Your average civilian who gets stung by one of these things is not going to have the lifetime of mental scar tissue that I've accumulated," he says.
"I know from experience that lying on a hospital bed wondering if you're going to die from an envenomation is the loneliest place on earth.
"The trauma is far and away the worst in this sense and does cause actual mental injuries."
Each tentacle, up to a metre long, and its head, have stingers, and researchers in Far North Queensland say they "actively" hunt for prey despite being more than 90 per cent water.
"The pain goes on for two weeks or more, successively getting worse as time goes on … it is a brutality, a physical torture," says Professor Fry.
"I've heard it from [multiple people] who've been stung, almost the exact same words, where they describe an impending feeling of doom.
"There's this psychological effect that is as traumatising to these people as the physical impact of the pain.
"There's no antivenom. We have no way of neutralising it at this point, all we can do is treat the symptoms.
"There's a million different ways to produce pain … and in the case of the Irukandji, whatever pain pathway it's going through … it's not one of the pain pathways that morphine blocks.
"Morphine has no effect on these people. Zero."
Credits:
- Reporting: Brianna Morris-Grant
- Illustrations: Emma Machan
- Editing: Danielle Cronin