Bitten Influencers, Angry Snakes and More Animal Selfies Gone Wrong

An influencer trying to livestream a video of herself eating a live octopus, was stalled by a hostile meal. A clip from a Chinese vlogger known as “seaside girl Little Seven,” starts with a woman trying to bite down on an octopus, but ends with the cephalopod attacking her. In the video, the octopus appears to latch on to the vlogger’s face and looks to leave behind a small wound on the woman’s cheek. 

Kim Kardashian’s attempt to stage a sweet pic with a pachyderm in Thailand backfired when the elephant got a little too close for comfort – resulting in this epic series of shots.

Instagram fitness model Michelle Lewin tried to take a photo with one of the famed pigs of Big Major Cay island in Exuma, in the Bahamas. However, she learned the hard way that wild pigs don’t make the best Instagam props when one turned on her and left an angry red welt on her behind. She shared the video to serve as a warning to future influencers.

A forest ranger in Jaipaiguri, India, found out the hard way that selfies with wild animals are a dangerous business. Sanjay Dutta and his team of rangers caught a large snake that they believed was eating local goats, and wanted to pose with their find. Dutta wrapped the animal around his neck for a photo, but instead of smiling for the camera, the reptile choked the ranger until it was removed from his neck. Dutta was not harmed during the incident and the snake was later released into a forest away from local farms. 

Katarina Zarutskie, a 19-year-old Instagram model and student at the University of Miami, was bitten by a shark in the Bahamas’ Exumas islands while on vacation with her boyfriend and his family. The college student received the nibble after attempting to pose for photos in the water with a group of nurse sharks. One of the sharks, likely mistaking Zarutskie’s hand for food, bit down on the Instagram model’s wrist. Zarutskie was able to stay calm, remove her hand from the shark’s mouth, and get out of the water without serious injury. 

One wild bear selfie is one too many, so when Waterton Canyon in Denver, Colorado, had multiple park guests attempting to take selfies with wild bears, the park temporarily shutdown. 

“We’ve actually seen people using selfie sticks to try and get as close to the bears as possible, sometimes within 10 feet of wild bears,” the park’s recreation manager, Brandon Ransom, wrote in a blog post on what led to the shutdown in 2015.

Around the same time Waterton Canyon was shutting down due to bear selfies, a woman visiting Yellowstone Park was injured while attempting to take a photo with a bison. 

The animal charged at the woman when she got close and ended up flipping the selfie-seeker. According to the National Park Service, the woman was lucky to escape the encounter with only minor injuries.

In 2016, two peacocks at China’s Yunnan Wild Animal Park reportedly died after being manhandled and passed around by guests who wanted to get selfies with the birds. 

According to Mashable, one of the peacocks literally died of fright a half-hour after being grabbed by the park visitors.