After spotting a beautiful shell, Beckylee Rawls didn’t think twice about picking it up to get a closer look. What she never could have imagined was that she was actually holding one of the world’s most venomous creatures, which can paralyze and kill its prey.
Rawls, 29, was tide pooling in Okinawa, Japan, in early June when she noticed a shell with a gorgeous marble pattern in the water. As someone with a collection of shells at home, she couldn’t resist picking it up and getting a closer look.
Indeed, she even captured a video showing the marble cone snail in her bare hand, telling Newsweek that she “had no idea it could be dangerous.”
Rawls said: “When I first saw the shell, I was just focused on how beautiful it was. I’ve picked up so many shells while at the beach before without hesitancy. I didn’t even realize it was alive at first.”
Once she realized it was still alive, she assumed it was “just a harmless snail” and placed it back in the water. Thankfully so, in the end.
It was only when she got home and did a reverse image search of the shell that Rawls came to realize that this was no ordinary shell. She was stunned to discover that it was in fact a cone snail—one of the deadliest creatures in the world.
Cone snails, part of the Conidae family, are a type of predatory gastropod mollusk that live inside spiral shells. They range in size, reaching up to around 11 inches in length, but their power lies within their toxic venom.
They capture their prey by using a harpoon-like hollow tooth known as a radula, which is jabbed into prey to inject the venom which can paralyze and kill. While they typically hunt worms or other mollusks, humans can be stung by inadvertently picking cone snails up in their hands.
Research published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information suggests that the venom from one cone snail has the potential to kill up to 700 people. Indeed, most envenomation among humans occurs on the palms and fingers.
Rawls had no idea what she was holding at the time, but after learning more about the danger of cone snails, she immediately felt “the fear set in.”
She continued: “I started thinking through everything I had done—holding and shaking it—and realizing how bad it could’ve been. I was so paranoid for days that I had been stung and just didn’t realize it yet.
“But I never felt anything, and eventually I accepted I was okay. The more I researched the cone snail, the scarier it got, especially when I found out there’s no antivenom.”
Thankfully, Rawls wasn’t stung, and she didn’t experience any symptoms in the days that followed. Nonetheless, she was very shaken up by the terrifying close call.
It seemed like such a harmless shell, but the reality was very different.
Rawls shared footage of her encounter with the deadly snail which can cause “full paralysis in minutes” on TikTok (@beckyleeinoki). The video went viral with over 25.8 million views and more than 833,500 likes in a matter of days, as many people were desperate to know more.
She’s been overwhelmed by the response, as plenty of TikTok users thanked Rawls for sharing her story because they would have done the same as her without knowing.
“It really showed me how little-known this danger is, which made me feel like sharing it was the right thing,” Rawls told Newsweek. “I still love the ocean, and this won’t scare me away, but I’m way more cautious now. I treat anything unfamiliar with respect and distance. I’m grateful for whatever reason the snail did not sting me and to have this second chance.”
Whenever she’s exploring the coastline now, Rawls has a new rule that she will be sure to follow: if it’s a cone, leave it alone.
Social media users were left horrified by Rawls’s near miss with the deadly cone snail, leading to more than 7,000 comments on her TikTok post.
One comment reads: “so this is the day I stop picking up shells from the beach!”
Another TikTok user wrote: “They need to teach this in schools because i also would have 100 percent picked that up.”
While another person added: “As a biologist, I learned to admire things from afar. Do not touch anything if it’s new for you.”
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