Stingrays harbor these weapons for one purpose: protection. The ray that attacked Irwin plunged its rear tail barb, reportedly close to eight inches long, into his chest. Short-tail stingrays possess two tail spines: a slender spike in front of a huge jagged bayonet. Typically regarded as inquisitive but wary fish, all stingrays are armed with at least one serrated venomous spine at the base of their whip-like tails. The largest of all stingrays, the short-tail can grow up to 14 feet long and tip the scales at more than 750 pounds. The short-tail stingray, Dasyatis brevicaudata, is a huge and normally docile fish. The poisonous stinger punctured Irwin’s heart, killing him almost instantly. Irwin was filming a documentary off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on September 4th when a short-tail stingray swimming below him suddenly speared him through the chest with its dagger-like tail spine. Farshad Khorrami’s Robotic Ray Robert Goodier įor a man who made his living tangling with some of the most ferocious creatures on Earth, Steve Irwin met his end at the hands of an unlikely suspect.
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