Pufferfish Toxin - It happened in Brazil that a family prepared a pufferfish without realizing that the creature is one of the deadliest in the world and now, eleven members of that same family are in hospital.
The Brazilian family that consumed the pufferfish and its toxin is the Souza family. The pufferfish was caught by a friend of theirs in Duque de Caixas, Rio de Janeiro, according to the Daily Mail.
The friend had given the pufferfish to them as a gift and they cooked it unknowingly. They had no idea apparently that it was a pufferfish and it looked "so tasty" to them that they ended up inviting their extended family to taste it as well.
Then, after taking the first bite, they all began to vomit and soon enough, they couldn't feel their limbs.
"My husband was the first to say he couldn't feel his tongue, then his face and then his arms. Then his legs went dead and he couldn't stand up anymore. It was terrifying," Cristiane Souza told to RJ TV and Huffington Post noted.
After that, most members of the family weren't even able to make it to the door or to the car, so the ones who were feeling slightly better had to drag the other ones and hurry to the hospital.
The grandmother of the family reported that they are all in a critical condition and at the very moment, praying for a miracle after this unfortunate event.
The National Geographic has stated that almost all pufferfishes have tetrodoxtin, which is a venom that is deadly to other fishes and to humans, the tetrodoxin that one pufferfish contains can kill up to 30 adult humans.
So, what this family consumed was deadly and they got saved due to the little quantity of toxin from the pufferfish that they consumed. And even so, they are not completely off the hook yet.
