Feet of an Australian teen bleed non-stop after dipping his feet in water

News24xx.com - 16-year-old Sam Kahizay dipped his feet for a while at the Brighton Beach after a tiring day of non-stop football practice. After the Australian teen walked out of the water, he noticed that his feet was covered in sand, prompting him to go back and wash the sand off. After a few minutes, he came out of the water feeling refreshed. However, he noticed that his feet was bleeding profusely—and there was no stopping it.


“We live across the road from the beach,” his father, Jarrod Kanizay, told The Washington Post. “He hobbled home pretty quickly. He rang me, actually, from outside. … He said, ‘Dad, you better come down outside.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Just come down!’

“We were very suprised.”

They discovered thousands of tiny bites on the teen’s legs, as if he had been pricked with a pin repeatedly. There was also a massive amount of blood.

They brought him to the hospital, where he continued to bleed profusely. Hospital staff and his family tried to stop the bleeding—but to no avail.

The Melbourne leg munchers had been described as “sea lice” but, under a microscope, marine biologist Genefor Walker-Smith found that Kanizay had been the unlucky lunch for scavenging crustaceans called amphipods. They occur in pretty much any aquatic environment and serve a vital role in eating dead stuff. Walker-Smith said they might also have contained an anticoagulant, which exacerbated the bleeding.

“It’s possible [Sam] disturbed a feeding group, but they are generally not out there waiting to attack like piranhas,” she told. “The crustaceans would have swarmed off that piece of dead fish and onto his leg. He may have already had a cut, perhaps, and they were able to smell that wound or any chemicals that the wound was giving off.”

While many locals are now scared to take a dip in the water, Sam says he will still take dips. Sam has no plans to avoid the water—though he may think twice before standing still in one place for so long, his father said.