Mr Young was rushed inside and given an anti-venom injection

It made an emergency landing in Bogota and was met by paramedics

A doctor who happened to be on board insisted that the plane turn around

Mr Young said he was in so much pain that he feared he would die

He tried to flick it away, but was stung three times by the scorpion

Adam Young felt something crawling under his shirt as he tried to nap

A Canadian man says he suffered hallucinations and excruciating pain, and feared he was going to die after he was stung by a venomous scorpion on a flight from Colombia to Mexico.

The plane was forced to turn around and make an emergency landing in Bogota, the Colombian capital, after Adam Young was attacked by the dangerous arachnid.

It happened as Mr Young, from St John’s, Newfoundland, felt something crawling under his shirt as he tried to nap shortly after the plane departed for Mexico City.

Adam Young suffered nausea, numbness, chest pains and hallucinations after being stung (file photo)

He tried to flick it off, but it was too late, the CBC reported.

Mr Young wrote in a Facebook post: ‘The scorpion had already done its work on me and stung me three times.

‘I jumped out of my chair in a huge commotion and it fell out of my shirt on to the chair.’

He was travelling with friend Brendan Dawson Walsh, who thought it was a prank until he saw the scorpion on the plane’s floor.

After they alerted flight attendants, the scorpion was found under Mr Young's seat cushion and killed as the plane aborted its five-hour journey and returned to Bogota last Friday.

Adam Young said he was stung after he felt something crawling under his shirt (file photo)

The plane diverted after a doctor who happened to be on board insisted that it land as soon as possible, radio station VOCM reported.

Mr Young said the venom was setting into his veins, causing ‘excruciating’ pain and a ‘burning sensation’.

He wrote: ‘Even though I remained calm on the outside I was dying on the inside.’

He suffered nausea, numbness to his arm, chest pains and hallucinations during the 20 minutes that it took to return to Bogota, where paramedics met the plane on the tarmac.

A fellow passenger told Mr Young that it was a highly-venomous scorpion which attacked him (file photo)

Mr Young was rushed to a medical room inside the airport and given an anti-venom injection in the buttocks.

While he received urgent treatment, employees did a sweep of the plane and cleared it for take-off after they failed to find additional scorpions.

Still in pain, Mr Young boarded the plane and continued his journey to Mexico.

A fellow passenger told him that he had been attacked by a highly-venomous scorpion which is capable of killing a human.

Friday’s incident was at least the second time in as many months a passenger has been stung by a scorpion on a plane.

Last month a scorpion stung a woman on the hand just before take-off on an Alaskan Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Portland.

The woman was stung as the plane was taxiing on the runway, and she stomped the scorpion to death as the aircraft returned to the gate.

She declined additional medical treatment after she was checked over by paramedics.