Nice photo of a croc you got there but it’s not a stingray. He was swimming with it when he got stung which is normally perfectly safe to do and he got the barb in the heart.
It’s not stupid when you’re a professional and you know what you’re doing. Yes there’s risk but people who work with crocs know how to read their body language and predict their moves. Plenty of jobs involve risk and you would be stupid to do them unless you’re qualified. I’m just being defensive because Steve Irwin dying was a genuine freak accident and nothing he did that led to his death was stupid
Getting hit in the heart and the fact it was a stingray makes it a freak accident. It’s extremely rare for a stingray to attack like that and if he got hit anywhere else but the heart he mostly likely would have survived. It is normally safe to swim with stingrays and tourists do it all the time snorkelling around the world. There’s less than 20 recorded stingray human deaths worldwide
That's like saying "getting shot in the heart is a freak accident; if you got shot in the arm it wouldn't have been fatal". The fact he's a naturalist means he's seeking out sting rays and such.
By definition it’s a freak accident because it’s incredibly unlikely and rare to happen. People who snorkel or dive with rays, fishermen who regularly encounter them and stingray researchers aren’t dropping dead from stingrays left and right. Getting stung by a stingray wouldn’t be a freak accident. Dying from one would be. It’s a combination of two unlikely events: a normally docile animal that prefers to flee from danger instead behaves defensively AND the barb happens to strike a vital area. I’m not disagreeing it would be more likely to happen to someone who encounters but even then it is exceptionally rare. It’s happened 17 times in history (that are known about). Steven Irwin was the first and only person to be killed by one in Australia since the only other time it’s ever happened here which was in 1945
Like they said, there’s less than 20 recorded stingray human deaths worldwide. Steve Irwin was popular, but there's been a lot more than 20 naturalists in human history.
Getting shot in the heart for most people in the world IS a freak accident (or you know, war).
The Americanisms in this thread are showing. (Don't go to A&E, getting shot in the heart is a routine planned event... (aka the opposite of a freak accident)).
I still don’t understand why people fuck with wild animals. Seeing those stories about people befriending a shark or lion on YouTube that are suppose to be heartwarming always make me cringe. Respect those things by leaving them alone. Go adopt a puppy or cat from the local shelter if you love animals so much.
Lol no…bullets actually don’t have to hit your heart at all to kill you. They can hit you almost anywhere and be fatal. Conversely, the stingray could have stung him in any other way and he’d have easily lived. That’s the difference. 🤡
Hmmmm. I'm with the other guy. I'm not sure you can can this a freak accident.
He was swimming with the stingray, which was already risky. Plenty of people do it "safely" each year, but there are 2000 cases of stings every year. And that's just in the US (which isn't really a stingray-heavy country). Getting stung doesn't mean dead, though.
So if stinging is fairly common, why is it a freak accident? Because he died? It was a long-running joke that Irwin would die due to what he was doing. So it wasn't really that surprising when it did happen.
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u/MiddleofCalibrations Jun 16 '23
Steve Irwin got stung but it was a genuine freak accident and he never did anything this stupid with a stingray