When it comes to toxicity, size doesn’t matter. You heard right, … size DOES NOT matter! Enter the Blue-ringed Octopus, a lightweight, tipping the scales at a paltry 25grams. What it lacks in size, it makes up for with its fearsome reputation as one of the world’s deadliest predators.
So what type of weapon, could a tiny animal, with all it’s body bits shove into a sack on its head, possibly posses to make it so scary? Spit. Serious? Yep you heard it right… also known by the fancy name saliva.
But people… this is no average spit and it’s not the type that you want to be playing tonsil hockey with. It’s laced with tetradotoxin (TTX) a deadly neurotoxin that paralyses prey. And Blue-rings are so badass that they get other animals (bacteria) to make the TTX for them, which they happily do, hanging out in the Blue-rings salivary glands.
Now consider this… around 400ug of TTX is found in an adult Blue-ringed Octopus. The Lethal Dose factor for TTX is 5ug per kg of person. So a 70kg adult would need around 350ug to send them to their grave. That’s around 1/1000th of a poppy seed! Can you even begin to imagine how teeny tiny that is?
There are other animals that have TTX such as the pufferfish and poison arrow frog. BUT this super sucker is the only one that uses it to inject its victims (crabs and shrimps), while the frog and fish only have it in their tissues to kill other animals who try and eat them.
So humans don’t mess with them, don’t try to tie its boneless body in knots and whatever you don’t be stupid and eat it, because TTX is also found in the tissues.
If you’re not afraid of big words and want to geek it up some more on TTX check out these scientific papers:
The molecular mystique of tetrodotoxin
Intra-organismal distribution of tetrodotoxin in two species of blue-ringed octopuses
