Brazilian boy injects butterfly remains for online challenge, dies

New York: A 14-year-old boy in Brazil’s Bahia died after injecting himself with butterfly remains participating in an online challenge.

Davi Nunes Moreira was transported to a hospital in Planalto after he began vomiting, and developed a limp the other day, The New York Post reported.

Moreira hid the details of the challenge and told his father that he hurt himself while playing.

When this condition worsened the boy eventually revealed that he had injected butterfly remains in his right leg.

He was immediately taken to another hospital in Vitoria da Conquista where he died.

Moreira’s distraught father later discovered a syringe hidden under the boy’s pillow.

Authorities could not identify the butterfly that the boy injected in his body but the milkweed that monarch butterflies feed on as caterpillars contains harmful toxins.

Marcelo Duarte, a butterfly specialist and the director of Sao Paulo University's Zoology Museum, said that ‘Butterflies have a complex biology’, adding that ‘the fluids present in their bodies have not been studied in depth in terms of their toxicity to humans’.

The boy is suspected to have died from toxins in the butterfly following septic shock.

A spokesman for the police said that the autopsy results would provide exact cause of the death.

When another similar challenge went wrong last year, social media influencer Thammy MC with 2 million followers suffered first- and second-degree burns from a viral ice challenge.

The challenge wanted her to submerge both her feet in a mixture of ice and coarse salt for 15 minutes.

Upon pulling out her feet she experienced excruciating pain with doctors later advising her that prolonged exposure to cold could cause thrombosis or even necrosis (tissue death).