Original subtitles

At the moment, we are in Australia.

It is our very first day here, and we are very jet-lagged.

And earlier today, we came to this park,

and we found that it was completely

infested with forest leeches.

Today I'm going to set myself the challenge of trying to make

an episode in a single hour.

So it is 3 o'clock PM here in Australia, and by 4 o'clock,

I'm going to have been eaten alive

by these hungry bloodsuckers.

In Australia, people are famous for walking around barefoot.

I never quite understood this.

Unless, of course, you just want to connect

with the planet, in which case I have great respect for that.

When it comes to walking around in Australia,

there are a lot of things that can bite and sting you

that are really painful.

The area that we're in right now is notorious for its number

of Sydney funnel web spiders.

Hopefully I don't run into one of those.

But I feel like my best odds of getting eaten alive

by these leeches will be to take off my socks and my boots

and let my piggies, let my dogs out and see whether or not,

in the walk around this pond right here,

I manage to get myself swarmed by these forest leeches.

Probably can't see that on the GoPro,

but already there is a leech right there.

Here we go.

I gotta come back, get the camera cut it,

and then take it with me.

OK, the quest begins.

And by quest, I mean, well, there

are going to be leeches questing for the delicious

taste of my feet.

Now, people often make fun of my feet because, to be honest,

I got pretty weak feet.

They're really soft for some reason.

Now, they're all buried down in this leaf structure.

You see this?

All the leaves that you see covering

the forest floor here are exactly

where those leeches are hiding.

And similar to ticks, what they will do

is quest for their next victim, which

means they can sense heat, body heat, and carbon

monoxide-- carbon dioxide?

Nope, it's carbon dioxide.

The heat from your skin and the carbon dioxide that's

exuded from your skin allows leeches to say,

that is a warm-blooded creature.

I'm going to hop on, catch a free ride, and get a free meal.

Hm.

So far-- oh, boy, there we go.

Walking through the underbrush, really all you gotta do

is step a couple of spots, sit, and wait.

Yeah, it's starting to--

starting to dig in.

I can feel them beginning to drink.

Right there, that is one's mouth locked in place.

Got a couple more down here.

The blood buffet line is officially

open and ready for business.

All right.

Let's work my way down here.

OK, how do I get back up to the trail?

I'm completely lost.

One way people often get leeches on them is just by simply

stopping to admire nature.

You look around, you're standing in an area

that is dense with plants.

You're not paying attention to your feet.

You look down, and you're like, OK, this is--

this is totally good to go right here.

Except for the fact that leeches are

coming up and off of the plants and onto your legs.

I think I have found a pretty good spot here,

standing in the ferns, because I'm seeing more and more

of them jumping onto my legs.

Especially this giant one right there.

Look at this guy.

He just hitched on a couple seconds ago.

Oh.

Heck, it's was starting to get close to the shorts line.

What I don't want is for them to crawl up my shorts.

I just keep walking and walking and walking,

and my feet are taking a beating.

But it's worth it.

OK, it has been a solid hour since I

walked around the outside of this pond.

And while I was hoping for more leeches,

there are not just a couple. There are many.

I'm going to count them real quick.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,

14, 15, 16 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

21 leeches on my legs, feet, and ankles at the moment.

And the one that definitely took the most

advantage of my blood buffet line was this guy right here.

Now, to remove a leech, you have to remember,

there is the back end and the front end.

Both ends have suction cups.

You want to remove the back end first, which

is going to be the bigger end.

You may think, oh, bigger end's probably the head.

Nope.

The bigger end is actually the butt,

and the smaller end is the head itself.

All you need to do is use your fingernail.

Slide your fingernail up against the back end of the leech,

like that, to get it to unadhere.

And then the same exact thing, you want to do by its mouth.

Now, what you don't want to do is just

pull the leech straight off.

If you do that or if you squeeze the leech,

you can actually cause it to regurgitate some of its meal

into your wound.

That could cause an infection.

So you take your thumb nail or a credit card

or anything that's flat and smooth

and run it right from the backside up against its mouth,

just like that, and the leech will pop off.

And that right there is one very full leech.

Yeah, buddy, you've had enough to eat, I think.

Ugh, that is disgusting.

This leech started out short and skinny,

and now it's long and plump.

And it was filled with Coyote Peterson's blood.

Now, I'm going to remove every single one of these leeches

in that same fashion.

As you can see there, the blood is starting to flow.

That's always going to happen.

Now, for cleanup, all you need to use

is a little bit of soap and water, maybe some Neosporin.

Keep the wound uncovered, keep dabbing it.

You don't want to cover it.

You want to just let the wound breathe at the end of the day,

and you should be fine.

Very seldom are there infections that are caused from leech

bites, unless, of course, you squeeze

it and get some of that regurgitation

into the wound itself.

So as long as you're careful when removing leeches,

you hopefully should be just fine.

But I have to say, it is very creepy feeling to have something

on you, drinking your blood.

Is there any pain that I'm experiencing?

No, absolutely none whatsoever, because of that numbing agent

in their saliva.

You may feel a little bit of a pinch.

I did feel a pinch a couple of times, especially

the ones in between my toes.

You know, there are many methods

that you may stumble across on the internet

for removing leeches.

You know, people say, use salt like you would melt a slug,

or use a lighter.

This is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

It's all about properly removing the back end

using the edge of your thumb.

I find that, honestly, the best thing to use is a credit card.

Yeah, get you off of there like that.

Oh, man.

Look at this beast here.

Oh, that is so slimy.

Ah!

Gross.

Oh, god, don't stick on there, too.

Yeah.

Come on.

One thing I'm not looking forward to

is-- the last time we did a leech episode,

the itching was a big part of the aftermath,

and I have a feeling that that's going

to be the same with these guys.

Oh, yeah.

And there you have it.

Coyote Peterson turning himself into a blood

buffet line for forest leeches.

But at the end of the day, we showed you guys

how to properly remove these creepy, alien-looking creatures

from your body if you ever find yourself

in the blood buffet line.

I'm Coyote Peterson.

Be brave, stay wild.

We'll see you on the next adventure.

What a way to start off Australia.

As I learned from our previous leech experiment,

these bites had more to give, as exactly a week after filming

the scene, I experienced intense itchiness, weird seepage,

and around a dozen nagging wounds

that eventually turned to scars that I still carry today.

Moral of the story?

Do your best to avoid becoming a leech buffet line.

So why in the world would I want to be intentionally

stung by this plant species?

Well, we want to figure out a couple of things.

Number one, how susceptible am I to plant venoms?

Number two, is the sting really as bad as I've read about?

And number three, if you do run into this plant in the wild,

what are some ways that you can help alleviate the pain

and remove the nettles from your arm?

That's what they call in the industry

the devil's toilet paper.

All right, should we keep hiking and find one

that's a little bit bigger?

Well, this whole hillside. Look.

Holy cow, the hillside

is literally filled with these.

That is all giant stinging trees right there.

A lot easier to find stinging plants than it

is the stinging insects.

Looks like we've got our pick of the crop out here.

Now it's just a matter of finding

the right leaf that's going to put this forearm

into a world of pain.

This tree behind me right here would not be considered a giant.

It's just a baby.

But believe it or not, this species

can grow to be nearly a hundred feet in height.

Now, as they get bigger, the spines on their main stem,

their trunk, so to speak, begin to evolve away.

And all of the irritating nettles

are just on the stalks and the leaves themselves.

As you can see, these leaves have holes

in them from caterpillars.

You think that this defense would have evolved to take care

of things like insects that are going to eat the leaves,

but really this toxin only affects mammals.

OK, so this is the leaf I'm going to go for right here.

And,

Plant, thank you for letting us use one of your leaves.

I'm going to be very gentle about this,

almost like a game of operation, to work my arm in here.

So that I don't accidentally bump any of the other leaves,

I'm going to cut this right at the base.

OK, there we go.

The Australian giant stinging tree.

Looks very unassuming.

Now, before we get into the exciting part, the sting of it

all, I want to just take a look at this leaf.

We're going to show you guys some macro shots of the nettles

that are on the undersides.

These are known as trichomes.

And the trichomes, specifically, are like little barbs

filled with a neurotoxin.

Scientists believe that this neurotoxin

is very similar to that which you find in the cone

snail, one of the most painful stings

in the marine animal kingdom.

Now, I've never been stung by a cone snail,

because it's said that if you take a cone snail sting,

you will be hospitalized.

Now, the way those trichomes work

is that if you picture a needle with the tip

of it being very sharp, hypodermic in nature,

that tip breaks off.

Once those little hairs touch skin,

and they release that toxin, causing massive irritation,

which triggers your pain receptors.

And what's really unique is that scientists don't

know why the pain receptors are set off

and last as long as they do.

Now, those trichomes are located on the top of the leaf,

but also on the underside and all along the stem.

OK, I think it's time

to get down to business here.

What's crazy about this is I'm not going to be

able to remove these nettles.

They, in a sense, are microscopic, especially

once they get into your skin.

And like shards of fiberglass, they're going

to work their way down and in.

The pain will begin to come on within a matter of seconds

and will get worse and worse as the minutes go by.

Now, we do have a method that I've

read about that could possibly remove some of those nettles

from my arm.

But first things first, we've got to get

the nettles into the skin.

I'm Coyote Peterson, and I'm about to enter

the pain zone with the Australian giant stinging tree.

Here we go.

One two.

I don't need to smack my arm.

All I need to do is gently graze the leaf

over the forearm like this, and I'm going

to be nettled multiple times.

Oh, boy.

Three.

Oh, my-- ah.

Shh-- jeeez.

Oh, the immediate searing pain.

Oh, my gosh.

That is instantaneous.

OK, it's not a slow lead on.

It is-- the second the leaf touches your skin,

it feels like-- if you were to put Pop Rocks in your mouth

and they start exploding.

Ah!

And then they just start hurting right away.

Holy cow!

Holy cow!

That is getting worse as the seconds go by.

OK, so you can start to see

all those little welts forming.

The arm is beginning to turn red.

This is sort of like the jellyfish of the plant kingdom,

and those tiny nettles are almost

like the pneumatophores that come off

of the jellyfish's tentacles.

Ah!

Oh, I want to, like, rub it or do something to it,

but I know if I do that, it's only going

to work the nettles in deeper.

Now, it's important to note that this is the second most painful

stinging plant in Australia.

The number one, top tier, the one

that they call the suicide plant,

is called the gympie gympie.

Now, we once ranked the bullet ant as the number one sting

in the insect kingdom.

From there, it climbed up to the giant hornet

and the execution wasp.

So supposedly, this sting from this plant

is like the comparison of the Japanese giant hornet.

Honestly, at this point, I'd say the pain is starting

to get into that realm of sticking my hand into a box

full of yellow jackets.

And I've been very public in saying

that the hand and the angry yellow jacket box

is the most painful experience I've ever gone through.

So far, this has not eclipsed that,

but if the pain continues to increase, as it is now,

I'm in for a very painful next 24 hours.

OK, so when you think about it,

I barely grazed that leaf over my forearm.

Imagine, if you were to be hiking on the side of one

of these steep inclinements and you slipped and you fell and you

rolled down that hill like Humpty Dumpty, head over heels,

through these plants, how bad that would be.

It feels as if somebody has taken a hot glue gun

and spread the glue on my forearm,

and I can't actually get the glue off of my skin.

And it's beginning to radiate, and I

can feel it coming in these surges of

womp-womp, womp-womp womp-womp.

Like, that's the pacing of the pain.

And scientists don't quite know why

this neurotoxin reacts to humans, to mammal

DNA, the way that it does,

All right, so what we're going to do now

is let this set in for a bit longer,

and then I'm going to try one of the remedies

that I saw online, using hair wax

strips to remove some of those trichomes from the skin.

What I want to do is lay the wax, starting at the back,

into the nettle zone, just like that.

Slowly.

Ah!

Oh, that does not feel good.

Massage that wax in.

Now, a little bit of heat is what's

going to help that wax adhere to the skin and, at the same time,

hopefully, those nettles.

I want to remove as many of those from my skin as possible.

Now, if you can get yourself to wax strips faster

than 3 hours and 30 minutes that I let go by, it would be better.

Because, remember, these are going

to constantly be working themselves

down and into the skin.

All right, I feel like that's on there pretty good.

You guys ready?

Here we go.

Peel off the strip fast and quickly.

One, two, three.

Ow!

Whoa!

God, that really hurt.

And I don't know--

I don't know if that made it any better.

It might have made it worse, to be honest with you.

I maybe can see some very fine little--

Yeah, I definitely can.

There's no way you're going to see this on camera, but I 100%

can see that it has removed some of the nettles.

And I'm wondering, from an angle--

this is how I was able to see the nettles earlier.

From an angle, don't see any nettles remaining.

But to play it safe, I'm going to use my one

other side to this wax strip.

All right.

We'll work that in there, just like that.

Wax strip number two coming off.

One, two, three.

Oh.

Yowzers!

Well, hopefully I got all the rest of them that time.

Oh, yeah.

They are definitely pulling out.

That is fantastic.

They just look like these little white fibers.

And, essentially, that's exactly what nettles are.

All right.

Well, if you happen to find yourself

in this worst-case scenario where you stumble

upon a giant stinging tree and you get those nettles

in your arm, that is proof right there that wax strips will help

remove those that have not worked

themselves down beneath the surface of the skin.

And I know what everybody out there is thinking.

Coyote, are you going to put yourself into the sting

zone with the gympie-gympie?

Yeah, we're definitely going to film that.

I honestly don't feel like this was nearly as bad as I

thought it was going to be.

And I know you guys all want to see what it's like for a coyote

to be stung by the world's most painful plant,

and I think that episode is definitely necessary.

OK, there it is, the gympie-gympie leaf.

Oh, the water definitely makes it worse!

This is terrible at the moment.

Absolutely terrible.

I'm Coyote Peterson.

Be brave, stay wild.

We'll see you on the next adventure.

All right, I'm going to get up and shake

my arm off a little bit.

This is very painful.