It ’s one of the most striking pieces of lore about the rainforests of South America : do n’t stop to exempt yourself in a river , the legend says , because there ’s a Pisces the Fishes that can float up your piddle stream and found itself into your urethra . Once there , it ’s out of the question to take out withoutfull amputation of the phallus , which you ’d better do quick , before the little invader eats through your inner mucus membrane or place egg in your vesica .
It ’s terrifying – but should it be ? Is the “ vampire Pisces the Fishes , ” or “ toothpick Pisces , ” or ( to utilise its less arresting name ) the candiru really something we require to be worried about ?
The first clue that everything may not be quite cosher with the stories of the Amazonian penis - invading Pisces – aside from the description “ Amazonian member - invade fish ” – is probably the fact that the first Europeans to account the animate being hardly seem to agree on what it looks like .
“ The taxonomy of South American catfish is complex , much revised , and appears , at sentence , controversial , ” explainsIrmgard Bauer , Adjunct Senior Lecturer at James Cook University ’s College of Healthcare Sciences , in a2013 revaluation paperon the semi - mythical ichthyoid .
“ Adding to the problem , Explorer severally named the specimen they came across for lack of reference point works . It is often not even unmortgaged if they talk about the same fish , peculiarly when descriptions and sizes of the fish vary hugely , ” she continue . " give the similarity of many specie , and the early explorers ' lack of suitable orchestration to distinguish between them , the want of agreement is not surprising … Usually , Pisces the Fishes [ specimen ] were preserve in any grog at hand and deteriorated to the point where they could not be typified at all . ”
Now , the candiru is definitely a real fish – it ’s a type of mudcat . They ’re mostly pretty small , which does make sense if you ’re going to arrogate it can fit out up a phallus , generally valuate 17 cm ( 7 inches ) not including the tail . The specific type of candiru usually pinpoint as the phallus - eating Pisces the Fishes isVandellia cirrhosa , which is even smaller – unremarkably no more than 3 to 5 cm ( 1.2 to 2 inch ) in length .
They also do deservesomeof their rather icky reputation . They ’re a parasitic fish , who survive by swimming into the gill of their hosts – mostly other catfish – and feasting on their blood . To lock itself into military position , it expend sticker around its own gills to latch on to its emcee – which , if you conceive the rumors , may be a human urethra .
unretentive answer : almost sure not .
Sorry to all the gore fans out there , but there are a few problems with this idea , and they range in rigourousness from “ mildly suspicious ” to “ patently ridiculous . ” Let ’s start with the least damnatory and work up .
“ regard the alleged voracious substance abuse of the little fish , the geographic size of it of its habitat , and the considerable number of people go along the river system , should one not gestate by now a few confirmed cases in the aesculapian literature?”askedBauer .
It ’s a good point : almost all the “ evidence ” for hypothesize urethral candiru attacks come from 19th and early 20th century IE , and most ofthatcomes from questionably - translated paper from Indigenous locals who , get ’s face it , hadpretty good reasonstowant all these European fellas to leave(or at the very least , to terminate piss in their river . )
On top of that , Bauer points out , there are quite a few examples where hoi polloi who you ’d definitely gestate to at leastmentionthe existence of a genial penis - invading Pisces have apparently zero to say about it . Victorian Internet Explorer like Alexander von Humboldt and Alfred Russel Wallace , both of whom spend year and geezerhood in the rainforests of South America , never mentioned the candiru , and Henry Walter Bates , who go with Wallace in his exploration of the region , wrote that the locals were “ almost amphibious ” – a surprising lifestyle to adopt for a people apparently concerned with a Pisces swimming up their urethra .
Next , there are the biological significance . opine you ’re a tiny fish , used to the Brobdingnagian expanse of the Amazon or the Rio Negro , and of a sudden you get yourself inside some human ’s urethra : a thermionic tube less than 8 millimeter ( 0.3 in ) in diameter and notably lacking in fresh body of water . draw a blank wiggling your means into a vesica and reproducing – you ’re run to be dead in a few hour .
Sure , you may say , but the website I read say it ’s attracted to the flavor of urine ! It simply ca n’t help itself ! Well , that bring us to another reason to doubt the claims : candirudon’t seem to beall that attracted to the smelling of human urine .
“ In 1829 German biologist and explorer Carl Friedrick Philipp von Martius … hypothesized that the odor of urine attracted candirus , as primary prey of the Pisces the Fishes emit urea from their lamella , ” notes a 2015 reputation in theJournal of Urology . “ However recent research showed that the Pisces search by sight and are not attract to human urine . ”
And now for the real kicker : that matter about the fish swimming up your urine stream ? It ’s unsufferable .
And we do n’t mean “ unheard of ” – we meanliterally impossible . “ During an expedition in … 1855 , French naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau was told by local fishermen that candirus ‘ spring out of the water and imbue into the urethra by ascend the distance of the fluid pillar ’ , ” notes the Journal of Urology .
“ These claim … resist the laws of cathartic , ” the authors now note .
give the huge amount of mythos around the candiru , you ’d think there must be quite a few cases of the Pisces the Fishes stupefy into a human trunk some way or another . In fact , though , there are scarcely any – and only one recorded instance from the modern era .
One celebrated account of a candiru getting lodged in human genitals total from 1891 , from the naturalist Paul Le Cointe – but it did n’t involve the little Pisces swimming up a urine current to enter a phallus . In fact , like afull 100 percentof early recorded case – actually witnessed by the recorder , not “ a friend of a friend hear ” stories – the candiru was found stuck in the vaginal canal of a woman , and removed without any drastic intervention .
In fact , there ’s only been one case ever register of a candiru getting stuck in a manful urethra , and it go on in 1997 . The victim , a 23 - year - old from Itacoatiara , Brazil , claimed that the Pisces had indeed jumped from the river into his member while he piss , something that , we ’ll cue you , is impossible .
“ He reported trying to grab hold of the fish , but it was very slippery , and it force its way inside with alarming speed,”a case report explains . “ The candirú ’s forward-moving progression was blocked by the sphincter ramify the penial urethra from the bulbar urethra . With the musical passage blocked , the fish had made a lateral turn and prick through the tissue into the corpus spongiosum , create an opening into the scrotum . ”
Apparently , by the time the pathetic guy got to the hospital , the fish had died . This meant both good news and bad intelligence for the affected role : the fish ’s backbone had relax post - mortem , meaning it could be removed the same way it choke in rather than requiring surgery through the perineum ; on the other hand , the case report mark that the fish was too decayed to precisely determine its specie , which fathom even worse than it being there in the first place .
But is this proof positive that candiru can and do attack urethra ? Some people – and by that , we mean the expert and scientist whose job it is to know these thing – are n’t so sure .
“ There is a inclination to cling to the one much air case from Brazil,”wroteBauer . “ alas , there are too many repugnance and irregularities attach to this pillowcase to rely on it with assurance , such as the dupe ’s insistency that the fish jumped out of the piddle and ascended the urine column . ”
Not only that , but when marine biologist Stephen Spotte investigated the slip in 1999 , he noted several inconsistencies that drop the font into even more dubiety . For one thing , the Pisces was described in the type write up and photos as having “ measured 134 mm ( 5½ inch ) [ long ] , with a head breadth of 11.5 millimeters ( 7/16 inches ) ” , which you may recognize as way bigger than a received urethra .
And remember how the typeface report said that the Pisces the Fishes “ made a sidelong turn and bitten through the tissue paper into the … scrotum ” ? harmonise to Spotte , that just does n’t contribute up : candiru tooth are n’t strong enough to chew through the paries of a urethra .
fundamentally , there ’s reason to remain doubting , is what we ’re saying .
So is there really a Pisces the Fishes out there that require to swim up your member and bite on your urethra ? Well , possibly – it ’s a adult sometime world out there , after all , and we ’ve barely discoveredeven a fifthof the species that live in it .
But that written report you heard in the saloon about a friend of a friend ’s cousin ’s fiancé who go a fish in his dick ? Definitely did n’t pass . And if it did , there are a few top - rated journal that will need to interview him .
“ traveller to the Amazon who are precious about their urethras can be tell that there is no evidence of candirus wait in the rivers ready to set on humans,”wroteBauer , “ though tight‐fitting bathing suits will assuage any anxiety and do no harm . ”
“ This verdict may let down a outstanding many people , ” she tot , “ but until very welcome confirmed evidence exists of this Pisces ’s interaction with human being , traveller to the Amazon who feel tempted to pee-pee in the river , perhaps with spine‐tingling trepidation , will most likely not return home with heroic selection storey to tell apart . ”
All “ explainer ” article are confirmed by fact checkers to be right at sentence of publishing . Text , images , and link may be edited , remove , or add to at a later date to keep information current .
