With Halloween approaching, everyone is trying to find the scariest costumes and watch the most terrifying movies in order to fully experience the holiday. People love being scared by dangerous monsters, or watch movies with killer beasts. Most of the scariest beings during Halloween are fictional, but one of the worst animals that frightens me to my core is called the stonefish and it is very real.
The stonefish lives in Australia, which is home to pretty much the most poisonous/deadly version of every animal. Yet the stonefish is in a horrifying category of its own, right above the stinging jellyfish and razor-toothed sharks. It is the animal of my nightmares and the single reason above all else that I hesitate to travel to Australia.
1. The stonefish is among some of the deadliest animals on Earth, and also one of the ugliest.
2. It lies in the sand on beaches pretending to be a rock, just waiting for some poor soul to come along and step on it (the fish can live out of water for up to 24 hours, look at this one just pretending to relax on the beach).
3. If you are so unlucky to get stung by this monster, you have a good chance of dying. If you survive, you will wish you were dead as soon as you feel the sting. People have reported it as agonizing pain that is the worst they have ever felt, and some have tried cutting off their limbs to escape the torture.
4. The most terrifying aspect of this fish is that it appears to have absolutely no fear in the presence of potential predators. So as much as you are scared of it, it is not scared of you...at all. Researchers have found the fish to be completely docile, probably since any predator it’s ever been near has either been stung to death or has recognized it as the stonefish and gotten the hell out of its way.
It isn't all terrifying, though, when I watched a video of a scientist capturing it in order to conduct tests on the fish, it acted almost like a nice, content pet. The stonefish was just leisurely swimming near the divers to see what they were up to, and when it got caught it just kept doing its thing even in the new tank. For a couple minutes I thought, "Hey, this fish is just trying to mind its own business and stay out of the way. It is probably misunderstood" (then the scientists pointed out the poisonous spikes on its back and I remembered the evilness inside that little fish’s body).
You have now been warned. The real monsters to be scared of look just like a rock. If you ever travel to Australia, enjoy your stay and try not to be struck with fear, but beware of what lurks in the sand as you walk along the beach. They may very well be poisonous fish playing pretend.
