Puffer Fish

Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the Tetraodontiformes order. The family includes many familiar species which are variously called pufferfish, balloonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, toadies, honey toads, and sea squab. They are morphologically similar to the closely related porcupinefish, which have large conspicuous spines.Puffer poisoning usually results from consumption of incorrectly prepared puffer soup, fugu chiri or occasionally from raw puffer meat, sashimi fugu. While chiri is much more likely to cause death, sashimi fugu often causes intoxication, light-headedness, and numbness of the lips, and is often eaten for this reason. Puffer's poisoning deadens the tongue and lips, and induces dizziness and vomiting, followed by numbness and prickling over the body, rapid heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and muscle paralysis. The toxin paralyzes diaphragm muscles and stops breathing. Patients who live longer than 24 hours typically survive, although possibly after a coma lasting several days. Some patients claim to have remained fully conscious throughout the coma, and can often recount events that occurred while they were supposedly unconscious. In Voodoo, puffer's poison must be ingested by the victim for the black magic of creating "zombies," most likely because of the pseudocomatose effect