The only animal Steve Irwin was afraid of was the parrot, due to numerous incidents where they bit him. However, the animal that actually took his life had a far more docile reputation. Stingrays are usually quite harmless, but on September 4, 2006, a rare incident involving one caused Irwin’s death at the age of 44.
The zoologist was filming a documentary called “Ocean’s Deadliest,” a documentary about the dangerous sea life around the Great Barrier Reef. On September 4, the crew couldn’t film as intended, so he took the opportunity to film some family-friendly material, with a stingray he found lounging in shallow water, for his eight-year-old daughter’s youth-oriented series, “Bindi, the Jungle Girl.” Unfortunately, he disturbed the animal, which reacted by stabbing Irwin in the chest with its stinger — a rare but highly dangerous injury. Irwin’s heart had little chance, seeing as the stingray struck him right in the chest multiple times. At least one of the stings hit Irwin’s heart, and in the aftermath, he expressed a belief that his lung had been pierced, as well. The combination of the agonizingly painful venom and the physical trauma proved fatal.
“It was just a really bad accident,” toxinologist Jamie Seymour described the incident in an interview with WBUR. “If he’d been five feet one side or coming from another direction or the sun had been somewhere else, [the stingray’s attack] wouldn’t have happened.”
