{"id":25547,"date":"2025-07-26T13:16:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T13:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/25547\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T13:16:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T13:16:06","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.newsbeep.com\/ca\/25547\/","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>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.<\/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":2,"featured_media":25548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-25547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}