Does vinegar help a jellyfish sting? Watch a video from the university laboratories and you will know the answer

In the past, Dr. Lotan explained that the belief that vinegar helps against a jellyfish sting is a myth. Now, ahead of the events of the Night of Scientists, an experiment in her laboratory shows that vinegar can even make the sting worse

| Watch a video from the laboratories of the University of Haifa - watching the hunting arms of the jellyfish when they meet vinegar:

| The vinegar makes the sting of the jellyfish worse

Using vinegar as a remedy for a jellyfish sting not only does not help, it may even worsen the situation and cause the jellyfish's hunting arms to release more venom into the body, as it turned out in an experiment conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Tamar Lotan, a marine biologist from the School of Marine Sciences of the University of Haifa, in preparation for the events Scientists' Night this coming Thursday at the University of Haifa, which will focus on the study of the sea.

Already the previous summer, Dr. Lotan said that the myth that developed around the effectiveness of vinegar as a substance that can counteract jellyfish venom was based on studies conducted on the box jellyfish and there is no research or reason to assume that vinegar affects the venom mechanisms of the wandering filamentous jellyfish, "our" jellyfish Since this year the topic of the "Scientists' Night" is the study of the sea, Dr. Lutan's laboratory asked to examine their assumption under the microscope so that they could verify or disprove it for the general public.

For this, they collected a large number of hunting arms of jellyfish - the tiny organ with which the jellyfish stings us. On top of each such arm are millions of tiny, syringe-like burning mechanisms, about a hundredth of a millimeter in size and inside them a needle with multiple lugs. When activated by contact with the human skin, a pressure of 150 atmospheres develops in the syringe - 70 times the pressure found in a car wheel - which causes the needle to be released and inserted into the skin with the same force as the speed of a gun bullet as it exits the muzzle.

| The vinegar stimulates the venom darts of the jellyfish to be released

After checking under the microscope that the hunting arms were "full" of the burning mechanisms, the researchers injected vinegar. Within a few seconds the stinging mechanisms began to "shoot" the venom in them and release the needles. That is, not only did the vinegar not suppress or contradict the burning mechanisms, it caused these mechanisms to act quickly. According to Gadi Piritansky, a research student in the laboratory who performed the experiment, when stung by a jellyfish, the jellyfish injects most of the venom in the hunting arms, but sometimes some of the hunting arms or venom mechanisms can remain on the body. Using vinegar will cause unfired syringes to shoot their venom, which will only increase the burn.

| So what is the correct treatment for a jellyfish sting?

"The treatment for a wandering thread burn is washing with water and soothing the affected area with medical preparations. If the burn is over a large area or the body's reaction is acute such as strong swelling, redness or an allergic reaction, you should go to get medical treatment," he mentions the effective way to treat the burn.