Steve Irwin, the hilarious Crocodile Hunter and star of his own movie, was killed today by a Stingray. The folks at Yahoo news give us this:
Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the “Crocodile Hunter,” was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44.
Irwin was at Batt Reef, off the remote coast of northeastern Queensland state, shooting a segment for a series called “Ocean’s Deadliest” when he swam too close to one of the animals, which have a poisonous barb on their tails, his friend and colleague John Stainton said.
“He came on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Stainton, who was on board Irwin’s boat at the time.
This is a real tragedy. But let’s be honest… we all knew that at some point this was going to happen. The guy just always took such INSANE risks… I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner.
Still… the man loved wildlife, he loved nature, and singlehandedly did more for wildlife than almost anyone else in the world. He raised peoples attention to the issues of nature… and also entertained the hell out of us. Yeah his movie sucked ass… but deep down we all admired this guy. Sad day.
