
Aquarium Corals of Anchorage Poison Humans, Dogs, and Cat - noahlt
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/aquarium-corals-of-anchorage-poison-10-1-2-humans-2-dogs-and-1-cat/
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aaronbrethorst
The line that stood out for me from the article:

    
    
        All through the night -- and let me emphasize
        that you just can't make this stuff up -- the
        coral seems to have exuded some sort of
        creeping death mist.
    

O_O

Please, someone, tell me that the author is exaggerating at least a little...

~~~
CamperBob2
Here's Wikipedia's version
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palytoxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palytoxin)):

    
    
       According to an ancient Hawaiian legend, (Malo 1951) on 
       the island of Maui near the harbour of Hana there was a 
       village of fishermen haunted by a curse. Upon their 
       return from the sea one of the fishermen went missing. 
       One day, enraged by another loss, the fishermen 
       assaulted a hunchbacked hermit deemed culprit of the 
       town's misery. While ripping off the cloak from the 
       hermit the villagers were shocked because they uncovered 
       rows of sharp and triangular teeth within huge jaws. A 
       shark god had been caught. 
    
       It was clear that the missing villagers had been eaten 
       by the god on their journeys to the sea. The men
       mercilessly tore the shark god into pieces, burned him 
       and threw the ashes into a tide pool near the harbour of 
       Hana. Shortly after, a thick brown moss started to grow 
       on the walls of the tide pool causing instant death to 
       victims hit by spears smeared with the moss. Thus was 
       the evil of the demon. The moss growing in the cursed 
       tide pool became known as "limu-make-o-Hana" which 
       literally means "seaweed of death from Hana."[3] The 
       Hawaiians believed that an ill curse came over them 
       if they tried to collect the deadly seaweed.[9]
    

So, there's that.

In reality you usually have to go looking for trouble with this stuff in order
to be affected by it. This article appears to be based on an unusually
virulent sub-species that isn't commonly seen in the aquarium trade.

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CamperBob2
Palytoxin is actually pretty well known in the reefing hobby. There are plenty
of stories about people developing strange and frightening symptoms after
exposure to _Palythoa_ , but fortunately none of them (to my knowledge) have
been terminal.

My SO is into this stuff, and I've learned that it's a fascinating and
extremely technical hobby, and an expensive one too. Most of the danger is to
your bank account.

~~~
technologistcom
True. A related article: [http://reefbuilders.com/2015/08/26/palytoxin-
dangerous/](http://reefbuilders.com/2015/08/26/palytoxin-dangerous/)

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gcb0
so both cases had a dog?

Is it that far fetched to believe the dog licked pieces from the floor and
then the owners, being dog owners that let the dog inside, played with the dog
and let it lick their faces?

