We’ve all accidentally done something dumb—it’s an inevitable part of life. But, for one woman, her “dumb”/naive moment could have killed her. She picked up a pretty but deadly seashell in Okinawa, Japan while tide pooling, and it was actually a live cone snail—one of the most venomous animals on Earth. Whoops.
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Thankfully, after realizing the shell still had a live snail inside of it, the woman placed the snail back in the water and moved on with her life. That is, until she realized what she’d narrowly avoided—paralysis and, possibly, death.
Becky, who goes by beckyleeinoki on TikTok, doesn’t make clear exactly when she realized the snail could have killed her, but she’s posted a series of videos about her incident on TikTok in hopes she can spare others from making the same mistake. In her video series, she shows the moment she innocently picked up the snail and shows viewers that the snail’s radula, the part of its body that delivers venom to its victims in a swift, harpoon-like motion, was millimeters away from her finger.
See Becky’s TikTok video about the “deadly seashell” here:
Here’s a second video about the incident that went viral:
Header stock image of Conus marmoreus shell by alarico/Getty Images
