A Sad Goodbye to Steve-O

[JimHawkins]

No idea how many around these parts are animal folks and watch Animal Planet and/or know who Steve Irwin is. Steve, AKA the Crocodile Hunter, managed to reach out and bring his unique lovable personality and enthusiasm for his work with animals to millions over the years.



Tragically he was killed during the filming of a movie, it appears, in a freak accident with a Stingray. He is survived by his brand new baby boy, three year old girl, wife and millions of beloved fans.. So sad and a great loss..

My deepest condolences to his family and freinds..

http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/cr ... ement.html

[Glenn]

Very sad loss. I did not watch him a lot but I have a lot of respect for the work he did. I think his influence in educating people over the past 10 years will have lasting influence on nature appreciation and conservation.

[Bill Glasheen]

I watched Steve Irwin often, and tried to get my kids to watch him as well. Sadly his programming was replaced by typical Saturday AM cartoon crap.

Steve liked to walk on the edge, so his death is not surprising. However the mode of death is rather freakish. Stingrays are gentle creatures, and their sting isn't anything too terrible to worry about. Unfortunately the barb went though his chest and into his heart, and he chose to pull it out. You might as well have shot him in the chest; the result would have been the same. No doubt he was doing something very "Steve" like riding the stingray. And now and then, animals will be animals.

I am now the proud owner of a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy. The fellow is now about half size at 40-something pounds, and already he's a handful. This dog was bred to protect African farms and hunt (harass) lions. It's a constant struggle for me to TRAIN MY KIDS how to handle this animal. The dog does what the dog was programmed to do. If you run like a maniac, he will tackle you either by nipping your heels or running right under your legs. And the tail is wagging all the way through it. It's nothing personal; that's what Ridgebacks do. Plus... the animal is stubborn. Not stupid, not flighty, not a flight risk, just stubborn. That's a desireable trait for an animal that needs to take on a lion and live to bark about it.

My older son now understands, and works with the dog "as is" and doesn't punish him for being a Ridgeback. The younger son is still a bit of a challenge. I'm constantly having to teach him how not to push the dog's buttons, so to speak. Again, it's nothing vicious or personal. An animal bred to chase will chase. An animal nicknamed "the lion dog" will think cat-and-mouse (lion and dog) is a game and will be up for the fun. Fun for a dog this powerful means you will end up on your butt, and the tail is wagging while waiting for more.

If you watched Steve long enough, you would see what incredible instincts and athleticism he posessed. But it was more than that. Steve rode the edge. He did that often, and one day he made a mistake. But it's no different than someone who loves motorcycles getting killed when someone pulls in front of him. Stuff happens; it's all a probability game. Steve knew his work and played the best odds, but he was ALWAYS playing a hand. Sooner or later, even the best "luck" will lose if given enough chances.

God bless him for getting killed doing what he loved best. I just feel badly for his extraordinarily beautiful wife and kids. They will miss their daddy. If they would have me, I'd adopt them all.

- Bill

[Glenn]

The way it is worded on CNN.com, it sounds like he tried pulling it out in hopes of preventing at least some of the toxin from entering his body. But then shortly afterward went into cardiac arrest.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/0 ... index.html
Some snippets:

Irwin's manager John Stainton said Irwin was being videotaped diving on a reef off Australia's northeast coast for a television show.

He told Australia's Network 10 that Irwin managed to pull the barb out of his chest but said it was too late, as the poison had already entered his body.

Irwin went into cardiac arrest within moments

Stainton described the footage of his friend dying as "terrible."

"It shows that Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him (in the chest), and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone,"

Cardiac arrest is not listed as a usual symptom of a stingray's sting in Medline Plus, the online medical encyclopedia of the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. But they note that although most victims recover within 48 hours, "death has occurred when the patient's chest or abdomen was punctured."

It does not sound like leaving it in would have helped him.

[Glenn]

There are different size barbs, ranging in adults from about 4 inches up to as much as 10 inches. I have not seen what species of stingray this was. In addition to contaiing a toxin, the barbs also tend to be serrated:

From http://www.elasmo-research.org/educatio ... y_city.htm

The 'sting' which gives these fishes their common name is a modified dermal denticle mounted near the base of the tail, about one-third along its total length. The sting consists of a blade-like barb with serrations along both edges and a venom gland at the base. The serrae point toward the base of the spine, making removal difficult and very painful. The venom is a fairly powerful nerve toxin which affects the heart in complex and dangerous ways.

[Bill Glasheen]

It does not sound like leaving it in would have helped him.

Pulling it out isn't necessarily going to improve the situation. The problem is that you're likely to do more damage pulling it out than what happened either with the venom or the initial penetration.

These barbs will penetrate most shoes. Fishermen get barbed by stingrays all the time. A bit of hot water and/or some meat tenderizer on the spot of penetration and you're usually good to go. But if you've got something like this embedded in you, they recommend you let a physician (an ER) pull it out.

How to remove something like this can be a bit counterintuitive. For instance if you have a fish hook in you, you NEVER try to pull it back out. Instead the smarter thing to do is to push it in and back out the skin again.

The venom is a fairly powerful nerve toxin which affects the heart in complex and dangerous ways.

Hmm... This is a bit of hyperbole. It's a mixture of various enzymes and other proteins. Mostly it has a localized (pain) effect. There can be some cardiovascular effects, but this is rare. If you're allergic though you could go into shock and die pretty quickly. That happens with bee/wasp stings all the time - in a minority of the many sting cases.

The barb is worse than the venom. If you get such a barb poked in your heart, you're in trouble. Pulling it back out isn't necessarily smart if you aren't in an ER and can crack the chest in minutes.

I probably got a more dangerous injection of venom just yesterday from the yellowjackets who chose to take me on. Big mistake. I found their nest, and I have neurotoxins. After the first 3 or 4 swarmings (I average about one a year), you get over the emotional aspect of it all and just deal with it. I always have a can of the wasp spray ready, and some benedryl in the medicine cabinet just in case my system suddenly chooses to develop an allergy.

- Bill

[Glenn]

So what likely caused the cardiac arrest: the neurotoxin, the hole in the heart, or the combination of the heart receiving both the neurotoxin and physical damage? But what was best to do in this situation depends on what caused the cardiac arrest.

I have heard that it is often better to leave penetrating objects in until they can be safely removed. Particularly with a serrated/barbed/jagged object. I think the instinct is to pull it though...I can only speculate that maybe he didn't realize it was in his heart. We'll never know even if he did what he consciously thought was best or if it was just reflexive action that pulled out the barb.

[Glenn]

Hmm... This is a bit of hyperbole. It's a mixture of various enzymes and other proteins. Mostly it has a localized (pain) effect. There can be some cardiovascular effects, but this is rare. If you're allergic though you could go into shock and die pretty quickly. That happens with bee/wasp stings all the time - in a minority of the many sting cases.

Did you also notice that the two quotes I posted contridicted each other somewhat on this point:

Cardiac arrest is not listed as a usual symptom of a stingray's sting in Medline Plus

The venom is a fairly powerful nerve toxin which affects the heart in complex and dangerous ways.

Can the toxin's introduction directly into the heart that makes a diffference?

[Bill Glasheen]

I did note that the article dances on both sides of the aisle.

Can the toxin's introduction directly into the heart that makes a diffference?

Maybe, in a freakish way.

Physicians do IM (intramuscular) injections all the time. It's a way of releasing something like an antibiotic (penicillin, for example) throughout the body faster than a subcutaneous (under the skin) injection, but slower than an IV (intravenous) infusion. The muscle tissues serves as a buffering reservoir that will send the drug through the body over a period of hours to a day. But you generally aren't trying to cause an effect right in the muscle bed.

There's a host of chemicals in stingray venom. They mostly have a localized main effect, which is an interaction between the enzymes in the venom and the nerves near the injection site. The body registers PAIN!!! But there can also be vascular effects and respiratory effects. Most of that would be effects on the medulla (brain stem) and the periphery (smooth muscles that control localized circulation). The arrhythmias and asystole reported can be an effect of the various chemicals on the individual cardiac cells. Cardiac cells (myocardium) serve as both muscles and nerves. If you screw around with electrolytes, you can cause arrythmias (a loss of coordination of the cardiac cell contractions). You can also cause spasms (temporary unrelenting contraction of the heart muscle) or asystole (inability to contract). All these could happen if you got unlucky enough to get a bolus right in the ventricular myocardium. That would indeed magnify any direct cardiac effect many fold.

Basically this was a freakish accident. All the wrong things happened for poor Steve.

- Bill

[mhosea]

Pending further details, I'd tend to assume that the cause of death was acute pericardial tamponade (bleeding into the pericardial sac, compressing the heart and preventing it from doing its job) with the venom just making things worse for various reasons. If so, conventional wisdom says that not removing the barb would have been the better choice, but I think it's important to emphasize that his injury was life-threatening no matter what course of action taken, and it may well be that his death was certain under the circumstances, barb removed or not.

[Glenn]

This incident reminds me of the death of noted herpetologist Joseph Slowinski on an expedition in Myanmar in September 2001. He made the mistake of reaching his hand into a snake bag before verifying the species, the collector had identified it as a harmless species when in fact it was a krait. Then after being bitten he chose to not cut off the bit finger, even though the expedition had no anti-venom with them. He died 28 hours later. One quick mistake by even the most experienced is all it takes sometimes. And he could have saved himself, but for some reason chose not to.
http://jacq.org/Slowinski/200204_bit.htm

Following breakfast, around 7:30, Joe lay down. At 8 he noticed a tingling in the muscles of his hand, and asked Dong Lin to call the group together. By 8:15, two Burmese assistants started the run of eight miles to Naung-Mon, the nearest town with a radio. Joe calmly told us what would probably happen and what we should do. He described the effects of a slowly increasing paralysis, eventually requiring mouth-to-mouth respiration until he could be taken to a hospital. If he lived, the neurotoxins would work their way out of his system in 48 hours. He would be conscious, he told us, the whole time.

[JimHawkins]

From what I understand he was not "playing" with the Stingray during the shoot and just happen to swim over it... No rhyme or reason...

Just have to feel bad for all who depended so much on him, his family and his extended family at the zoo, etc.. God bless him for living so much in the short time he was alive..

Good for you Bill with the Ridgeback.. They are fantastic dogs and long lived I think as well for their size..

Not to mention cute as can be as pups..

[Bill Glasheen]

Stingrays hide in the sand, waiting for prey. Fishermen often step on them, resulting in a sting right through their shoes or boots. Steve may have spooked the thing while swimming over the surface. From what I understand, there isn't any kind of protective swim equipment you can wear that will stop the barb from penetrating.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Jim

We like our puppy. Here is Maverick at 6 weeks, just before we took him home.



These days he's a bit difficult to cradle. Instead, he's taken to trying to kiss you
with these flying leaps that will knock your teeth out if you're not careful.

We're working on that...

- Bill

[AAAhmed46]

Jim

We like our puppy. Here is Maverick at 6 weeks, just before we took him home.



These days he's a bit difficult to cradle. Instead, he's taken to trying to kiss you
with these flying leaps that will knock your teeth out if you're not careful.

We're working on that...

- Bill

Maverick?

Based off the book/movie charecter?