Tiny piranhas.
True, “devour” is one of those charged words that look nice and alluring in a headline. But what happened was, some bugs bit the kid in the leg causing some bleeding, but no lasting damage.
My dad used to have piranhas. You could put your hand in the aquarium for a little bit, but I wouldn’t advise keeping your hand in there for long. I mean, they aren’t super agressive, but once they start eating…
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It isn’t as bad in the riverine forests where I work now, but back when I was doing the northern beaches I used to get a few hundred ticks per year. The big ones you can easily tear off, but the larval ticks (“grass ticks”) in breeding season are too small to extract without tearing out a chunk of flesh as well.
At peak season, the entire company looked like they had measles. We’d all be carrying dozens of the buggers.
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That way you can’t see the leeches.
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Never heard anyone call them “fleas”, only ever heard them called " sea lice". What is with all this wildlife horror, at least we still have some form of wildlife here. Although having said that, we at least don’t have bears ( and don’t say koala bears, because only Americans call them that.)
A bit dissapointing boing boing treats Australia as comic relief, but hasn’t mentioned what Elon Musk is doing in South Australia, for example.
Rather funny detail that wasn’t mentioned here (via businessinsider.de):
"Marine ecologist Alistair Poore gave Australian Broadcasting Corp. his best advice for avoiding these sorts of creatures in the rare event that they appear:
“Swim faster.”
;D
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Thanks a bunch for that image I didn’t need to imagine. I just yelled “oh shit” to no one in particular and my dogs are quite confused.
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Soooo…is there anything keeping these beasties from choosing a location farther up the leg?
The weird-unique creatures of Australia, pale in comparison to what America has currently unleashed to the WORLD!
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Well, let me just say this: Its a bloody good thing the kid was only STANDING. Ouch, WTF! How do you tell your parents I went to the beach and got crabs.
If he was swimming they probably wouldn’t have done as much.
By “standing,” I think he meant “not sitting.”
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At least they didn’t take it as a command
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Chiggers (shudder). As a child my sibling was unfortunate enough to sit and play in a pile of construction sand infested with them. Holy crap, those things are AWFUL.
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