Girl Survives World's Deadliest Sting

Take this one down for the medical books: A 10-year-old Australian girl beat the medical odds when she was stung late last year by the box jellyfish, the world's most venomous creature, and lived to tell the tale. Rachael Shardlow was swimming in eastern Queensland state when she was stung by the deadly fingernail-sized jellyfish. Shardlow's 13-year-old brother pulled her out of the water with the jellyfish's tentacles still wrapped around her legs. Jamie Seymour, professor of zoology and tropical ecology at James Cook University, described this particular type of jellyfish as "horrific" and said his initial reaction to Shardlow's sting was "you know to be honest, this kid should not be alive." Shardlow told her brother before passing out that she could not see or breathe, and her father said there was some scarring to her legs and short-term memory loss, but her cognitive skills and memory tests are now fine.