Woman Films Herself Cradling An Octopus Without Realising It's One Of The World's Deadliest Creatures

An Australian woman was "lucky to be alive" after she picked up one of the world's deadliest animals and cradled it in her hands.

The anonymous woman shared the footage on TikTok this week of her holding an octopus in her left hand. She captioned her video: "The dangerously beautiful sea."

TikTok

But it wasn¡¯t just any other sea creature ¡ª instead, she had unknowingly picked up a blue-ringed octopus, a very highly venomous species of octopus.

Many people were left shocked after watching the video.

¡°I actually held my breath for this one,¡± one user commented.

¡°Let¡¯s just say you¡¯re lucky to be alive,¡± another commented.

According to Marine Bio, when blue-ringed octopus senses danger, it secretes two types of venom to use against prey and predators.

TikTok

One of the venoms is used for hunting crabs and shrimp, which it feeds on, while the other venom, tetrodotoxin, acts as a paralytic to its predators. It is extremely toxic if a human comes in contact with it.

"The venoms are secreted into the blue-ringed octopus' saliva, but the mechanism for poisoning its victim is not well understood. Either the venom is expelled in the saliva into the water or the octopus bites its prey or predator," the website read.

"Once the prey is dead, the octopus begins consuming it with their powerful beak-like mouth."

For humans the bite may not be felt at first but symptoms will arise within minutes and include numbness of the lips and tongue, trouble breathing, followed by full paralysis of the breathing muscles.

In the event of a suspected bite, individuals are urged to seek immediate medical attention.

Last year, a TikTok user posted a bone-chilling video where he let a redback spider casually crawl all over his hand. FYI, redback spiders are one of the world's most venomous spiders.

It won't surprise anyone in this world to know that this bloke is from the land down under - Australia - notoriously known for its diverse wildlife and spider population.

Representational Image/Shutterstock

The redback spider is also known as the Australian black widow. It is a highly venomous spider that resides in Australia, south-east Asia and New Zealand. However, only the female is considered dangerous but we doubt that the TikTok user knew the difference.

Around 2,000 redback spider bites are reported each year and roughly 250 out of those have to get anti-venom. However, there have been no recorded deaths since redback anti-venom became available in the 1950s.

For the latest from trending, click here.