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quote:Originally posted by fritz_t_coyote
Quote:
quote:Originally posted by SR-PT4
Except that rays normally aren't all that dangerous, at least not in the sense of being lethal. There are plenty of stingray injuries here in SoCal every year (almost always injuries to the lower extremities), but in all of Australia there are two known deaths from rays and both were nearly identical to the incident that killed Steve Irwin: one a young boy in 1988, the other an adult male in 1930. Yeah, I'd call that more a freak accident than an inevitible one. You have a far greater risk of being struck by lightning, or a Buick.
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So you are saying you really gotta work at it to get killed by a ray?
Or do you have to be so used to dealing with obviously dangerous fauna, teasing crocs and snakes for fun and profit, that you get careless around critters that don' have 'big sharp pointy teeth'.
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Irwin had been bitten and otherwise injured by so many different animals it isn't funny. A strike by a large ray, although extremely painful anywhere else on the body, wouldn't be anymore deadly than being bitten by a non poisonous snake. To have that barb hit him in the one small place it would, and did, kill him (especially considering the body's own natural protective cage around the heart) can only be described as a freak incident.