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Actor Jamie Dornan was hospitalized with heart attack-like symptoms after an encounter with a poisonous caterpillar, according to his friend Gordon Smart who was recently interviewed on the BBC's The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected radio show.
The Scottish broadcaster explained how he and Dornan found themselves with racing hearts and arm discomfort during a golf outing in Portugal last year.
After a night of drinking with his friends, including as mentioned Dornan, Smart said he started to feel a "tingling in his left hand", a symptom that he says "usually signals the beginning of a heart attack".
He was taken to a local medical center, where the doctors said he had a heart rate of 210 and sent him to the hospital.
Only later did Smart learn that Dornan had also arrived at the hospital after suffering the same symptoms.
While the doctors initially blamed excessive caffeine and alcohol consumption during their vacation, a week after the incident, Smart said he received a "phone call from the doctor" asking if the group had come into contact with caterpillars while on vacation.
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They discovered in that conversation that they must have approached a caterpillar on the golf course.
"It turns out there are caterpillars on golf courses in southern Portugal that have been killing people's dogs and giving men in their 40s symptoms similar to heart attacks," Smart said.
Walking caterpillars have tiny hairs that contain a toxic protein that can cause itching, rashes, eye irritation, sore throats and breathing difficulties in both humans and animals, according to a release from the University of Florida's Department of Entomology.
"We were very lucky to get out of it alive," added Smart.
"So here's my story. The good news is it wasn't a caffeine overdose, it wasn't a hangover. It was a poisonous, poisonous caterpillar," he concluded.
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