Meet The Fish That Sparks Fear and Attacks The Human Penis and Urethra
The fear of the Candiru, may be the beginning of aquatic wisdom.
Horror can be interpreted in various ways. It could be a gruesome murder envisioned via a horror flick, or a dreadful nightmare where blood sucking zombies were making it a sports affair chasing you down a dark and lonely alley.
Whatever your interpretation of horror maybe, it still might not be anything compared to what so many Amazonians still fear and dread to date – The Candiru.
So many “unneeded” fauna inhabit the Amazon, but none instills a sense of fear and dread, like the ‘candiru’.
What is the Candiru?
The candiru is a feared but small beast in the Amazon, feared even more than the piranha. The candiru strikes when an unsuspecting prey ventures into a river and tries to pee by exposing their genitals.
The Candirus was first documented in 1829, as a form of Amazonian catfish, when the Amazonian people informed German biologist C.F.P. von Martius about them.
As at then, they had to wear special protection made of coconut shells, for the urethra or sometimes they tied ligature around their penises while going in or near the water.
How it attacks
The candiru is described as uniquely evil despite being very small at about an inch and a half long. It adopts a very stealth attack approach, than other carnivorous fishes. Instead of the usual fish bite and attack, the candiru forces itself inside the human’s body through a strange opening – the penis.
Candiru swims upstream through the penis of its victim into the urethra. In the urethra it attaches itself to the walls with barbs, making removal difficult, and trying to pull the fish causes it to sink deeper into the urethra.
The prospect of even getting the tiny little fish out is even quite torturous, to say the least. Some Amazonian natives suggest traditional remedies like herbal soak or hot bath; but in most occurrences, the eventual verdict and recommendation is the removal of the organ itself.
In 1855, an Araguay fisherman told a French naturalist not to urinate in the river as it would only encourage the ‘candiru’ to swim up the person’s urethra. Even after years, the legend still continues, and the Amazon natives still live in fear of the weird creature always do whatever it takes to avoid being victims of the aquatic beast.
A curator of fishes at the British Museum, George Albert Boulenger highlighted the impressive system of bathhouse which the natives adopted in order to bathe without exposing themselves fully in the river.
Despite the fear and paranoia about the candiru, the only other cases of the occurrence happened to women and were recorded in the 1800’s. There are only few documented cases of the candiru attacks and infestation and the most modern case documented in recent times was in Itacoatiara, Brazil, 1997. In 1997, a 23-year old man needed a two hour urological surgery to remove the fish from his ‘organ’, after he claimed he was attacked by the fish while urinating in the river.
Doubts and disbelief
Lots of marine biologists believe that the whole mystery and claims about the candiru is just a legend, as there has been no physical sighting of an attack happening live. Also, due to the small nature of the fish, and its relative lack of flight and self-propulsion, there are doubts whether it was capable of swimming up the urethra. This is in addition to the fact that the opening of the urethra is very tiny, making it almost impossible for a very tiny fish to find its way through.
Despite all this, the Amazon folks still maintain that the candiru is to be feared and that just because the fish hasn’t been documented or seen in action, doesn’t mean that it does not devastate its victims with its stealth attacks.
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Your post is golsen..yeah.. i thik post might have its advantages as well as & also thanks for sharing...
First time I'm reading about this, but i think if its true, then it must set in when the victim is in the water, not while taking a piss, what do you think?
Whaaaat? Its only attack our dick?? I am shocked. Anyway very informative article
It's really wonderful, I could not imagine there was a fish like this, I have not heard before, thank you for this useful information @rickie
A frightening prospect indeed, but I think it's mostly just a hyped up legend.