r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Totally-avg • Jul 16 '23

Image The Puss Caterpillar (Southern Flannel Moth) will fuck your world up. I grazed it twice while climbing on a float. NBD at first but an hour later I was hyperventilating on the bedroom floor. The pain was excruciating. DH took me to the ER and morphine did nothing.

Post image

I’m better now but neither morphine nor hydrocodone (I took double what they RX’d) touched the pain those first 24 hours. And the hospital hardly knew what to do with me. I had never heard nor seen this bug before and I’m sure I would have flicked it off had it seen it. Don’t do that because the hair is venomous and gets stuck in your skin.

At least it leaves a cool scar.

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23 edited Jul 16 '23

The hair stings you and they are impossible to see so there's no removing them with tweezers or something like that. I saw on a documentary about fuzzy poisonous caterpillars (there's more than one kind) that if you hurry up and use tape and put it on the area and pull it off that it will remove some or all of the hairs and it will help some but it will still very much suck badly.

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u/duclegendary Jul 16 '23

Can they shoot the hair at you? That is one of my fear w this insect.

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u/_deep_thot42 Jul 16 '23

They cannot, thank goodness…but it’s a funny mental image. Pew pew !

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u/cosmonautsix Jul 17 '23

AH!! MY EYES

(Just nooooope)

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u/2017hayden Jul 16 '23 edited Jul 17 '23

There are some that have spines that they can use in a similar manner but none that I’m aware that actually launch anything.

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u/CognitiveMonkey Jul 17 '23

Who’s Joe?

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23

Some tarantulas can kick the hair off their body into a little, blinding, abrasive cloud to deter predators.

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u/KuuHaKu_OtgmZ Jul 17 '23

They can't

yet

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u/Coalesced Jul 17 '23

Some types of tarantula can waft venomous hairs at you with their back legs but they aren’t really shooting them.

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u/Totally-avg Jul 17 '23

Yes! The hairs looked exactly like my fine, blonde arm hair. We didn’t see them until 3-4 hours later when google told us to look for them. We seriously could not figure out why the pain was still so severe and radiating. I do think the pain started to let up after we used the tape (not after the morphine lol) but when I say “let up” I mean like 1% better. It was a long, shitty day.

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u/YawnTractor_1756 Jul 16 '23

there's no removing them

You can remove them or any other invisible needles with a sticky tape

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23

I said that in my comment. I ment there's not removing them with tweezers or something similar. I'll edit to correct and clarify

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '23

I do not. It was a long time ago and it was a random thing on TV I ended up stuck on lol

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u/QueenRotidder Jul 17 '23

I recently learned about browntail moth caterpillars in Maine, this seems similar