Culture

A Tourist Just Filmed A TikTok Video While Holding A Blue-Ringed Octopus And Holy Shit, Don’t!!

Talk about a brush with death.

by Sam Langford  29 January 2019
Video of a tourist holding a blue-ringed octopus.

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Wanna feel stressed? Well sorry dude, we’re in this together now, because a tourist visiting Australia just uploaded a TikTok video showing their hand cradling a blue-ringed octopus.

In case you are also a tourist, or just haven’t spent much time on coastal areas, a reminder: the blue-ringed octopus is one of the most dangerous animals in Australia, and that’s saying a lot. Each octopus contains enough venom to kill more than twenty people in just minutes.

The venom typically causes full-body paralysis, and there’s no anti-venom — if you’re bitten, you’ll need someone to perform CPR on you until medical help arrives.

TikTok tourist clearly was not aware of any of this, based on the way they’re gently cradling the tiny octopus in this video before aggressively trying to shake the thing off. You can see the octopus’s blue rings start to brighten as this shaking stresses it out — a sign that the octopus may be about to bite. Look at this, if you dare.

Tourist free handling a blue-ringed octopus on tik tok… from r/australia

The video’s caption translates roughly to “such a beautiful octopus” or “nice octopus”, further confirming that this tourist had no idea what they were handling. And given that blue-ringed octopus bites are often painless, we can only hope they actually made it through unscathed.

Anyway, let this be a PSA: if you see one of these little blue-ringed dudes, don’t touch it! In fact, that’s probably a pretty good rule for most Australian wildlife, come to think of it.