{"id":94059,"date":"2025-07-26T12:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/94059\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T12:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:21:13","slug":"meet-the-tiny-virtually-invisible-creature-that-causes-blinding-pain-and-violent-illness-in-humans-which-can-lead-to-life-threatening-complications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/94059\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the tiny, virtually invisible creature that causes blinding pain and violent illness in humans, which can lead to life-threatening complications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This minuscule, all-but invisible<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/insects-invertebrates\/jellyfish-guide\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> jellyfish<\/a> was new to science in the 1960s, though its existence off northern Australia had long been known from a sickness afflicting unlucky swimmers in the summer months.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> The symptoms, including a rash and goose bumps, leading to intense back and abdominal pain, blinding headaches, high blood pressure and fits of coughing and vomiting, were called Irukandji syndrome.<\/p>\n<p>But no victim saw the Irukandji, and no likely candidate had been caught in nets.<\/p>\n<p>Marine biologist John Barnes devoted his life to tracking the creature down, and in 1961 captured a peanut-sized, transparent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/marine-animals\/box-jellyfish\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">box jelly <\/a>with four hairlike <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/what-are-tentacles-and-how-do-they-differ-to-arms\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tentacles<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>There was only one way to see if it was the culprit: he placed its tentacles on his skin &#8211; and felt the syndrome&#8217;s effects. His find was named Carukia barnesi. There must be easier ways to have a species named after you&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Main image: Carukia barnesi \u00a9 Getty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This minuscule, all-but invisible jellyfish was new to science in the 1960s, though its existence off northern Australia&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":94060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-94059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114919511432317490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}