Steve Irwin, 44, known to all as the amped-up Crocodile Hunter,  died yesterday at the hands of an animal.  It wasn’t a crocodile — the animal that Steve often liked to get dangerously close to.  He was stung by a stingray.

Apparently, there is videotape of him pulling the stingray barb from his chest in his last moments of life.

In fact, pulling the barb out may have contributed to his own demise:

Marine experts say stingrays can deliver horrific, agonizing injuries from the toxin-laden barbs, which can measure up to 20 cm (8 in) in length and cause injuries like a knife or bayonet.

"The strongly serrated barb is capable of tearing and rendering flesh," said Dr Bryan Fry, deputy director of the Australian Venom Research Unit.

"It’s not the going in that causes the damage, it’s the coming out where those deep serrations kind of pull on the flesh, and you end up with a very jagged tear which is quite a pronounced injury," Fry said.