Latest / Privycast / Ep. 147 Urine Happy Vampire Fish

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Ep. 147 Urine Happy Vampire Fish · Privycast

0:16
>> Hunter Hoover: Either that, or I feel like his list nowadays would
0:19
just include, like, nine types of weeds,
0:22
a couple strains of weed, and, like, an
0:25
aspen tree or something. Uh,
0:28
welcome back to privy. Privy is
0:31
a podcast about bathrooms
0:33
recorded from my home
0:36
bathroom. I'm your host, hunter
0:38
Hoover, and I love bathrooms.
0:41
Welcome back, everyone, and welcome
0:44
back to spooky season.
0:47
Um, we're really kind of rounding out spooky season this
0:50
year. And for. For those who know,
0:53
a little peek behind the privy cast curtain here. Don't
0:56
look too close. You never know what you'll find. Oh,
1:01
my peacock is shedding. I hate
1:04
it when my peacock does that. This thing's.
1:08
Anyway, little peek behind the
1:11
privacast curtain. This is
1:14
a second recording. The first recording, um,
1:17
will be lost to time because
1:20
the technical difficulty, goblin got a hold of it. And
1:23
so, uh,
1:25
yes, we're going to do our best to bring the
1:28
same energy. Sometimes it's tough to bring the
1:31
same energy when you're doing a rerecord, I got to be
1:34
honest about that. But it's spooky season,
1:36
and, uh, there's all sorts of
1:39
spooky things out there. Spooky stuff, uh,
1:42
the creepity creepity skeletons. I got to be honest,
1:45
I've kind of dropped the ball in a big way. Um, for those
1:48
who don't know, this time of year is
1:51
spooky season, but it's also twist season. Justice for
1:54
the twist, um, wherein I
1:57
launch my campaign to drive people
2:00
kind of annoyed, but mostly just to
2:03
levy a grievance against the
2:06
song, the quote, unquote, the monster mash. The
2:08
song colloquially, um, known
2:11
by the culture as the monster mash. Now,
2:14
those with a keen ear will know that in the song the monster mashed,
2:17
the crypt keeper wakes up, and he asks, whatever happened to my
2:20
Transylvania twist? To which they all say, it's now
2:23
the mash. In other words, it was
2:25
incorrectly renamed against the crypt keeper,
2:28
the man who, uh, invented the dance
2:31
and the song thus named after the dance that it is
2:34
purporting to be causing in the monsters.
2:37
Um, he had no say
2:40
in his song and dance being
2:42
renamed, uh, and thus, it is kind of stolen
2:45
intellectual property, if you really think about it. Uh,
2:48
and so, justice for the twist. It's the Transylvania twist.
2:51
Make no mistake, those who
2:54
insist on calling it the monster mash,
2:57
they are not only wrong, um,
3:00
but they are spreading hate. So, I know
3:03
that's a thing that people fear nowadays,
3:05
so there's that. But it's spooky
3:08
season. And sometimes spooky
3:11
season, it finds us and the spooky of the
3:14
world can sometimes overlap with fun. There's,
3:17
like, fun spooky. I'm thinking of,
3:20
uh, you know, the vampires, the.
3:23
The goblins, um, the jack
3:26
o'lanterns, the
3:28
ghosts, the, like. You know, I
3:31
would say. I would say your traditional
3:33
Halloween monster group. I refuse to
3:36
say mash, but the traditional
3:39
Halloween grouping is pretty fun.
3:42
Uh, you know, and they have spooky
3:44
origins. Uh, there's some
3:47
creepity qualities in there. Um,
3:50
but in the past, for
3:53
spooky season, we have really leaned
3:55
into this kind of fun,
3:58
spooky type. We've talked about the
4:01
spooky world of bog bodies. That is, these bodies
4:04
that were left for dead, for lack of a better way of saying
4:07
it, in the bogs of Europe, we
4:10
talked about the piss prophets and the magic that
4:13
they perceived to be in our
4:15
urine. Good stuff.
4:18
Most recently, we have had a couple of
4:21
rounds, uh, of toilet
4:23
demons. We've looked at Bigfoot poop and the
4:26
like. And sometimes
4:29
these supernatural things, especially when
4:32
we start talking about bigfoots and toilet demonstration.
4:35
Sometimes those things can be somewhat
4:37
spooky in and of themselves. Uh,
4:41
and maybe you're one of these tough guys that's
4:44
like, I ain't afraid of
4:46
nothing. Casper. Yeah, right. The big,
4:49
green, goopy gobbler guy from. From
4:52
Ghostbusters. Yeah, right. I'm not a scared of
4:54
him. Um, and we get it, tough guy. Like, it's
4:57
fine. We are all impressed
5:00
by your incredible acumen
5:03
to resist being afraid of
5:05
anything. But
5:07
sometimes in this world,
5:10
the scariest things
5:14
are the ones that are real,
5:17
but they are shrouded in enough myth
5:19
and mystery to make
5:22
us ponder. And they are also
5:25
coupled with just the things that they'll do to
5:28
our bodies that
5:31
just kind of give us the creepity jeebities.
5:35
I guess that could be the case for Bigfoot.
5:38
Never really thought of that, I guess. You know, there's these
5:40
people that are like, I gotta go out and track down
5:43
Bigfoot. I need to find the guy,
5:46
and that's not me. I have no desire to find
5:49
Bigfoot. Um, I'm
5:52
moderately convinced that if a person finds
5:54
Bigfoot, it won't be, well, for them. Think of it like this.
5:58
When you're out and about, you don't actively, unless you're hunting
6:01
for them, but, like, whatever, but you don't.
6:04
If you. There's a bear, you leave it alone. Same with
6:07
the Bigfoots. Just leave them alone.
6:10
But we have one such topic today
6:13
of a
6:16
spooky, dare I say, horrifying
6:21
creature that is both shrouded in
6:23
mystery, uh, but also lends to
6:26
this horrifying aspect of worry
6:29
for our human bodies. As we
6:32
introduce this, we, of course, have to go back
6:35
and give a little bit of Runway up to this
6:38
week's episode.
6:45
In 17 hundreds, Germany coming out of the
6:47
scientific revolution of the 15 and 16.
6:50
Hundreds. Hundreds. German
6:53
apothecary and pharmacist Ernst
6:55
Wilhelm Mauritius, or Martius
6:58
Marcius, I don't know,
7:02
began, uh, came on the scene,
7:05
and in doing so, just confirming
7:08
the idea of natural medicine as an
7:11
apothecary, he set up a
7:14
botanical society in Regensburg,
7:16
Germany. Plant
7:18
scientists. You know, the scientific revolution
7:21
is going well when you're just trying to figure out all
7:24
the science you can get from all the very good plants.
7:27
Ernst had a son just before the turn of the
7:30
century named Carl
7:32
Karl. And like his dad,
7:35
Karl went on to study botany in
7:38
Erlangen. Karl earned a
7:40
PhD, and as a thesis
7:43
paper, he
7:45
published a catalog of the
7:48
plants that could be found in the
7:50
university's garden. Now, I know
7:53
this is not what he did, but in
7:56
my brain, when I hear that Carl,
7:59
as his thesis paper,
8:01
published a list of
8:04
the plants in the university
8:07
garden, uh, I just have in
8:10
my brain this idea that he just published, like, a
8:13
blank list. Like,
8:15
if this was done today, if somebody today was like, you
8:18
know what? For my senior thesis, for my big paper,
8:21
I'm gonna publish all of the plants in the garden. And then
8:24
as they look out at the concrete hellscape,
8:27
they realize, and I'm done. Either
8:30
that, or I feel like his list nowadays would just
8:33
include, like, nine types of weeds, a couple
8:36
strains of weed, and, like, an aspen
8:39
tree or something. And you can tell it's an aspen
8:42
by the way, because of the way it is. That's how you
8:44
know. But, yeah, for
8:47
his thesis paper, he published a list of the
8:50
university's plants. It's pretty neat. I'm sure
8:53
that he included a lot of
8:56
scientific information, maybe some descriptions,
8:59
maybe some discoveries, uh,
9:02
that he had made after he studied these plants.
9:06
But from this point, after earning his thesis for
9:09
publishing a list of plants, uh, he
9:12
went on and gained the attention of
9:15
more important people in the area of
9:17
Germany as it relates to botany and
9:20
other plant science.
9:23
Karl graduated from the university in
9:25
1814. Just three years after
9:28
graduating, the king of Bavaria sent him
9:31
and colleague Johann Baptist von
9:34
Spixley on an explorative
9:37
expedition to Brazil and the
9:39
amazonian rainforest.
9:43
So. So Carl and Johan and
9:46
their group of travelers, they, they
9:49
said, uh, that the cat dang peacock. Peacock
9:52
is just not agreeing with me. King Peacock needs to
9:55
chill out. But they
9:58
set out, uh, for Brazil, and
10:01
I got a note. When I think of Germany, I
10:04
don't think of many, like, explorative
10:06
expeditions to Brazil. But apparently this was a
10:09
thing. Like, apparently Germany was regularly
10:12
getting out there and doing the
10:15
explorative. I don't
10:18
know. I always would have thought, like,
10:20
spor the flip. Did he
10:23
say Spain or Portugal, also known
10:26
as sporuntugal?
10:28
Um, I would have thought that they would have got a hand
10:31
in the ball, and they probably did. But apparently Germany was
10:34
way up in the mix here.
10:37
They began their expedition in Rio de
10:39
Janeiro and traveled north to
10:42
Tabatanga, um, and while they did
10:45
so, they traveled along the
10:47
Amazon river, and they
10:50
explored many of the hooks and little tributaries that
10:53
the Amazon river took as it cut,
10:56
cut north. There's lots of plants out there.
10:59
Like, lots of plants. The Amazon
11:02
rainforest is literally slam full of
11:05
plants, chock full of them.
11:08
It makes Carl's university garden
11:11
just. Just look like a mud puddle. Do you know what
11:14
I mean?
11:17
And while exploring the Amazon rainforest would
11:20
probably be spooky enough, like, keep in
11:23
mind this is early 18 hundreds
11:25
electricity, not on the scene. And,
11:29
uh, you know, when you're out camping, when you're out in the middle of
11:31
nowhere in the dark, it's creepy.
11:34
It's spooky do gety, and
11:38
it'd be spooky enough. And these
11:40
expeditions were not for the faint of heart.
11:43
Carl Johan and their group had a three year
11:46
journey through the region of South
11:49
America, Brazil, particularly in the Amazon
11:52
river region. And upon
11:54
returning from Brazil and South America,
11:58
they would publish their works.
12:01
Carl wrote about many bushes and
12:04
plants and flowers that he found in the
12:07
region as he traveled. But as he traveled
12:10
throughout the region, he also gained a lot of
12:12
information via some of the animals.
12:15
Likewise, as he met natives and locals
12:18
throughout the area, he talked to many
12:21
of them, uh, to gain information from the
12:24
culture and learn about the societies that
12:27
lived along the Amazon river.
12:30
In this way, Carl Johan and their group learned many
12:33
things about all sorts of
12:36
different aspects of brazilian life. The
12:39
Amazon, the region, the animals. And they
12:42
learned all sorts of things in this way.
12:45
One of the things that they learned about was
12:48
a creature called the candiru.
12:56
The candiru, or the kanero, is
12:59
known as the toothpick fish
13:01
or as the vampire
13:04
fish. I know pretty spooky stuff
13:07
there. Vampire fish. I can't do the
13:09
vampire teeth. Very good. As the
13:12
story goes, while coral was
13:15
traveling throughout the region, and the natives in
13:18
the region were interacting with him and he
13:21
was getting information. They told him the
13:24
story about a fish that lives in the
13:27
Amazon river, the vampire fish, the
13:29
candiru. I want you to imagine
13:32
with me for a moment if you will. You're
13:35
living near the Amazon and you go
13:38
swimming. You know, you get ready to
13:40
go. You're probably not doing sunscreen in the early 18
13:43
hundreds, but nowadays, you know, you're getting at least an SPF
13:46
50 on that. But you get your usual
13:49
suspects. Swim trunks, check.
13:52
Rubber hair thingy, check.
13:55
Arm floaties, check and
13:57
check. Ladies, you got to cover the lady
14:00
bits, top and bottom, double check,
14:03
triple check. One for each side, you know what I'm
14:06
saying? And if you're really going to
14:09
get serious, you know, you got your goggles and you got your little
14:12
earplugs and maybe you got the little, you got the
14:15
little like nose thingies that you keep the water out
14:18
of your nose. Check, check and check.
14:21
And then, right, just, you know, as you're
14:23
finishing your preparation to go swim in the Amazon
14:26
river, you just get like a string or a
14:29
piece of vine or a small piece of leather
14:32
and you just tie off your
14:34
wiener
14:37
if cinching up your pee pee hole isn't your
14:40
flavor. Or ladies,
14:43
um, if you are not endowed in such a way,
14:47
you could also go the other method that Mauritius
14:50
noted from the locals that a number of
14:52
protective coverings for the genitals of both men
14:55
and women are implemented to protect
14:58
them from the vampire fish that lurks
15:00
beneath. We're protecting no, no
15:03
zones not nex from these vampires.
15:06
Uh, so keep in mind this protection
15:09
was probably pretty wild.
15:12
Some writings that he had,
15:14
uh, state things like leaves packed in
15:17
bits of fern, uh, but could
15:20
also be as much as like coconuts cut in
15:23
half, used to cover the zone, if you
15:26
will. Many of these are listed to
15:29
be worn also to ward off the bites of
15:32
piranhas. Um, live in the
15:34
Amazon. And here's the
15:37
deal. A lot of times
15:40
the Amazonian and the people of the region,
15:43
they were not just going to the river for fun.
15:46
They were not just going for a little afternoon swim. This
15:49
was where they bathed. They likely
15:51
gathered water from the area. Um,
15:54
it's more than just
15:57
swimming, if you will. Like, the river is
16:00
the bath. The river is the source of
16:03
some of the water that we might use for
16:06
use. I don't think the Amazon river is particularly
16:09
clean, but I'm sure they had figured out
16:11
boiling and other type things
16:15
as Carl and Johan.
16:18
You know what we're talking about rivers. It's time. It's
16:21
time. We got it. We got to keep things moist.
16:25
Oh,
16:31
speaking of coconut, I gotta say,
16:33
polar seltzer, if you're listening to this, I don't think you're listening to this,
16:36
but if you are, I gotta say
16:39
something. I got a bone to pick with you.
16:42
My understanding is you have released a
16:45
flavor that is described as like, creamy
16:48
coconut polar seltzer. And I can't find it
16:51
anywhere. And I'm sure, listener, you're thinking, well, Hunter,
16:54
why don't you just go on their website and buy it? You can't buy
16:56
the seltzer from Polar's website. I've looked on
16:59
Amazon, they don't carry the coconut flavor.
17:02
Um, and it would have been such a perfect pairing.
17:05
Coconut nether covers, coconut,
17:08
polar seltzer. It was a match made in the
17:11
Amazon. But today, alas, we have strawberry
17:14
and watermelon polar seltzer, it's very good. It's new to
17:16
me.
17:19
But polar, if you're listening, um,
17:22
um, you got, you got to
17:24
hook, you gotta tell me how I can get ahold of this stuff.
17:28
But, uh, the
17:31
locals gave him details about this
17:34
fish, stating that they
17:36
encourage people not to
17:39
pee in the river.
17:42
And as a result, Martius.
17:44
Martius meritus, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
17:47
butcher it. Carl took
17:50
this recommendation to mean
17:54
that the candiru vampire,
17:58
uh, fish is attracted to
18:01
urine. So if you're in the Amazon river,
18:04
don't pee because it's gonna attract this
18:06
fish. And you don't want the
18:09
vampire fish attracted to the
18:12
part of your body that is expelling urine.
18:14
Generally speaking, maritus
18:17
guest or Martius, it's impossible to know at
18:20
this point, guessed that it was the odor of the
18:23
urine that attracted the fish. Fish. And it makes you
18:26
wonder, can fish smell?
18:30
I mean, I guess they can. Like when you use power bait when you
18:33
go fishing, that stuff reeks. And I'm, and it's, it
18:36
says that is so the fish can smell it. But it's a weird thing
18:38
to think about because, like, I can't smell underwater,
18:41
but I guess fish can.
18:44
Um, what amazing creatures.
18:47
But if I try to smell underwater,
18:49
I
18:52
suffocate. But this is
18:54
the first time that concerns about this fish were
18:57
documented. Carl and Johann
19:00
returned from their, from their expeditions. They published their
19:03
works and this was the first time that
19:06
this fish was documented, though it
19:09
probably lives on and stories and
19:12
conversations of it for centuries amongst the
19:15
amazonian people and the people of Brazil.
19:18
Karl and his expedition are the
19:21
first time that it is written about and published
19:24
for others to read. The
19:27
second report about the candiru, the, uh,
19:30
vampire fish, is from a french scientist,
19:32
Francis de Castelnau. In
19:35
1855. Francis de
19:38
Castelnau states that an
19:42
uruguayan local noted the
19:44
fish being attracted to urine. So we have that as
19:47
a commonality. It's hard to tell, though, if, like,
19:50
if Martius's, uh,
19:54
comments about the urine are why others
19:56
think it's attracted to pee. It's hard to tell. Um, but
19:59
he notes that it's attracted even if you are peeing into
20:02
the river, not wiener submerged
20:05
or ladybit. P ladybit submerged.
20:09
And many of these other stories that begin to pop up
20:12
about the. The vampire fish, the
20:15
candiru, uh,
20:18
are from various european and american scientists,
20:21
and they're shared over the course of the next
20:23
150 to 200 years via
20:26
published scientific works. And the thing
20:29
that all of these accounts
20:32
have in common about the kendiru is that
20:35
this fish really loves urine.
20:37
Like, big fan. Can't get enough of it. It's
20:40
just constantly sniffing urine out in the water,
20:43
just, just really, just
20:46
huffing some urine and finding where it's
20:49
at. And the trouble
20:51
and the reason that this story
20:54
now greets us here in spoopkee season
20:57
is this. The fish's
21:00
anatomy, coupled with how
21:02
it is alleged to interact with humans
21:06
in and out of the water, is very troubling.
21:08
Dare I say, horrifying.
21:12
The candiru can grow up to 15
21:15
inches long. It's about that long. Size doesn't matter.
21:18
Just saying. They're very
21:20
thin. No, they're
21:23
bigger than a pencil, but they're not. They're kind of a long, narrow,
21:26
tube ish shaped fish.
21:29
Uh, and it is,
21:31
with the exception
21:34
of their thickness, is when they have fully
21:37
feasted on the blood of another fish. Usually
21:40
they trap them in their little gillies like
21:43
that, and that's how they extract the blood from
21:46
these other fish, vampire fish. Truly,
21:49
or as is the case
21:52
from our horrifying stories today,
21:55
they extract the blood and discharge of
21:58
blood from the wounds it inflicts on
22:01
the human urethra.
22:09
The most recent report we have of the candiru
22:12
getting stuck in a urethra is a
22:14
man in Itikoatara
22:17
who knows Brazil. It's impossible to know the name of
22:20
places. Um, in 1997, this
22:23
23 year old man named Silvio
22:26
claimed that the candiru
22:29
jumped from the water and followed his
22:31
stream of urine up to his pee pee hole, where
22:34
it entered and tried to get stuck in his
22:37
urethra. So it jumped
22:40
out of the water. He was thigh deep,
22:43
according to the report. And the fish exited the water to
22:46
do this and lodged itself in his wiener
22:48
hole. The spines on the back of
22:51
the fish, much like a fishhook where it goes in
22:54
and then it cannot be pulled out
22:57
because of the hook, the way it is hooked.
23:00
The spines on the back of the vampire fish, the
23:03
candiru, get stuck in the urethral
23:06
canal after it's entered. To just pull it out
23:09
is going to, for lack of a better way.
23:12
And though frustrating to say, rip things,
23:15
my understanding and my experience is this, as a, as a
23:18
man with a urethra, and really anybody
23:21
with one, is you want to keep the
23:24
ripping in that area of the body to a
23:27
minimum. Like, when it comes to pretty
23:30
much any part of the human body, you want almost no
23:33
ripping, but especially the
23:35
interior canals of
23:38
your nether region. Like, no
23:41
ripping is the perfect amount of ripping.
23:44
Silvio's story ends with Silvio going to the
23:47
doctor where he underwent a two hour
23:49
surgery to remove this fish
23:52
from his wiener.
23:55
It gives an entirely different meaning to the,
23:58
to the term fish stick.
24:01
Fish stick.
24:05
Settle down.
24:07
The report claims that once inside
24:10
his urethra, the candiru ate a hole
24:13
through the ventricle wall and burrowed its
24:16
way into the scrotum. Um, good. Dear, dear
24:19
Lord, have, lord have mercy.
24:22
How are we doing? Like,
24:25
have we entered saw level vampire fish
24:28
non through nutsack yet? Like, it's just truly
24:31
terrible. It's. Now,
24:34
I should tell you that the shared account from all the explorers
24:37
of the past related to this creature is that
24:40
it loves the smell of urine and pee. But they are also
24:43
told that this creature will, if you pee in the
24:46
water or if you just so happen to be unlucky
24:48
enough, the candiru will swim and try
24:51
to get stuck in your wiener hole or get
24:54
lodged into your lady part pp zone,
24:57
or just generally try to
25:00
extract blood from your nether region.
25:03
Very bad. And these
25:06
explorers, Carl, Johan,
25:09
Francis, they come back and they
25:12
report talking to doctors and the people in the area
25:15
where this is said to have happened.
25:17
And there were reports of doctors
25:23
having to cut, dear God,
25:27
to cut the fish out. Or in the worst
25:30
cases, full surgery. I don't know what that means
25:33
to me. Like, if, if full surgery is
25:36
not cutting the fish out of your
25:38
body, is that just mean they just ken doll you
25:41
and cut the losses? I don't know.
25:44
It seems bad. We can all agree this
25:47
seems bad. And if I was going to go
25:50
swimming in a river where this was even a
25:52
possibility, like,
25:55
it's spooky, it's
25:57
concerning. This is horror movie
26:00
saw level torture stuff.
26:04
Maybe the next time on, um, saw, he just needs to put him in a
26:07
box full of candiru fishes and see if they try
26:10
to orifice them. You know what I'm saying?
26:13
It's the fish that burrows its way into your pee pee
26:15
tube. You and your friends are going
26:18
swimming, and they're in the water and they shout,
26:21
I have to pee. And the legend of the candiru gets.
26:29
Once upon a time, there was a
26:32
small brazilian boy who went to the river with his
26:35
older brothers. They would go to the river for lots
26:38
of things, wash their clothes, get
26:40
water, bathe. But
26:43
sometimes it was nice to go to the river for an
26:46
afternoon play with the older brothers.
26:49
They've been to this river countless times. It's
26:52
where they swam. It's where they played.
26:56
One day, the boys playing in the water were playing a
26:58
game, and as they were doing so, uh, one of the older brothers
27:01
looks over and they see the younger brother making
27:04
what is, for lack of a better way of describing it,
27:07
the little kid now taking a pee face.
27:13
The brother paused, and the older brother's
27:16
frustrated that they share this river
27:20
with this little brother tried to move away in
27:22
frustration, knowing that his pee
27:25
stream has moved down the stream to where they
27:28
are. One day,
27:31
like so many other days before, the small
27:33
brazilian boy and his brothers go to the river to play.
27:37
And as they're playing, they're cutting up, they're splashing, they're
27:40
flopping around, they've got their coconut nut
27:42
garments on and the book.
27:45
One of the brothers looks over and he sees that the little brother
27:48
has paused, and the, and the brother says, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
27:51
whoa. You have to pee.
27:54
You have to get out of the river if you're going to pee.
27:57
And the younger brother, not understanding why,
28:00
asks, for what?
28:04
I peed in the river so many times before, and, uh,
28:07
nothing bad's happened. You just don't want to deal with
28:10
it. You just don't want my pee in the
28:12
river. The older brother, you can
28:15
just imagine, says, you know, the
28:17
candira, if you pee in the water,
28:20
it's gonna smell your pee and it's gonna come and
28:23
vampire the blood out of the inside of your pee
28:26
pee hole.
28:28
Scared for the, for the care of his urethra, the
28:31
younger brother was careful not to do so,
28:34
exited the water to do his business.
28:39
Now, do I know
28:41
that this is how the myth
28:44
of the Kundiru vampire fish spread? I do
28:47
not. I do not. But we can see it,
28:50
right? We can see how a story like this gets
28:53
propagated amongst the people. What
28:55
we do know is fluid
28:58
physics. Personal accounts
29:01
and lab tests have disproven much of
29:04
the Kundiru myth. First, the
29:06
candiru is not attracted to urine. This has
29:09
been almost unequivocally proven in a lab.
29:12
It does drink or feed on blood.
29:15
So that's fun. It's got that going for it.
29:18
As far as vampires go, it technically still checks
29:21
the box of loving to drink your blood.
29:25
Second, as much as we
29:28
might want it to try, a fish cannot
29:31
swim up a pea stream. It's not going to
29:34
happen. Fluid physics will not
29:36
allow the fish to do so.
29:40
Third, the diameter of the
29:43
candiru is so significantly
29:46
greater than the diameter
29:49
of a pp hole that
29:52
for the candiru to swim into
29:55
and enter that urethral canal via that
29:58
hole, it would need to open it
30:01
in order to do so. Now, I will note that this
30:04
could be possible for the lady parts,
30:07
but it still seems unlikely.
30:11
Fourth, every story we
30:13
have of the
30:16
vampire fish
30:19
vampiring a person in this very bad way
30:22
is secondhand. And the one modern
30:24
account we have about, uh,
30:28
stevia or whatever his head was,
30:30
uh, from the 1990s, uh,
30:33
has much data
30:35
disproving that. It leaves those reading it seriously
30:38
doubting the truth of the claim. The
30:41
story as it is, Silvio is his name.
30:44
Silvio's story seems a little more
30:46
larger than life.
30:49
Last, the myth of the
30:51
candiru is just kind of
30:53
counterintuitive. While the fish exists,
30:56
it doesn't make sense how it's going to swim into
30:59
my wiener hole, but here's what I'm
31:02
saying. We
31:04
can imagine, and we can see how
31:07
this story came about. For
31:10
a group of native Brazilians, you can see
31:13
why they reported to the european
31:15
explorers as they came through the area. This
31:18
is the river we wash in the. This is the river we do
31:21
our laundry in, and we get our water from. This is the river
31:24
we play in. And, uh, we don't want these
31:26
rando Europeans peeing in our
31:29
river. Tell them the story of the
31:31
candiru caught in the wiener cavity.
31:34
That'll spook them. That'll horrify them enough
31:37
to keep them from peeing in my river.
31:41
The fact that these Europeans took this
31:44
myth, took this story, and wrote it
31:47
down as scientific fact in the
31:49
scientific revolution, and brought it
31:52
back to Europe, where the legend of the vampire
31:55
fish in the candiru was spread not only
31:58
in the european continent, but into the american
32:01
people. And zeitgeist is
32:03
a wonderful, wonderful fact that
32:06
serves as a scientific prank. And
32:09
as a horrifying spoop key season story.
32:13
It circled all the way back, and the myth became
32:16
accepted understanding. That
32:19
is, until american marine
32:21
biologist Stephen Spott decided
32:24
he was going to get to the bottom of the
32:27
candiru story.
32:30
He did the work, and he figured it out.
32:33
It's a fish.
32:36
Yes, it does consume or parasite the blood
32:39
of other fish or organisms that it
32:42
traps in its gills while in the water.
32:45
But the idea that this fish is going to get
32:47
lodged in your urethral canal in
32:50
your zone is
32:52
unfounded. In fact,
32:55
in concluding his writings, Stephen
32:58
Spott wrote,
33:01
the odds of a person submerged in a
33:04
stream where the candiru live being attacked,
33:07
meaning the candiru gets lodged in your PP
33:10
hole. That was my editorial on that. He did not write the
33:13
heated. Steven Spot did not write pp
33:16
hole. That was my addition. Here
33:19
are about the same as being struck by
33:21
lightning while simultaneously
33:24
being eaten by a shark.
33:27
Not great odds. Not great odds, I'll admit.
33:30
But in the words of Lloyd Christmas.
33:33
So you're saying there's a chance.
33:36
And here's the thing. The
33:39
world is weird.
33:42
What lives in the back of our brain is
33:44
likely a smaller version of the. Is
33:47
there. Is there possibly a smaller version of the
33:50
kondiru who could accomplish this, this
33:53
human cavity excavating feat,
33:57
much like bigfoot, which I think is more proven
34:00
than the condiru wiener fish?
34:03
Um, the possibility of this, the
34:06
fact that there is even multiple
34:09
times that this has been said, might be
34:12
enough to keep us afraid.
34:15
And while you will likely never succumb to the
34:18
fate of the candiru, we here in America,
34:21
um, if you're listening to us from Brazil or the
34:23
Amazon, hello. I don't know how you came to
34:26
hear this show, but thank you for listening.
34:29
But if I'm ever in the Amazon, I don't
34:32
think I'm gonna risk blasting my stream straight
34:35
into the river. I'm gonna keep it
34:38
kosher. No sense in tempting fate
34:41
with the vampire fish.
34:49
This brings us to the end of another episode of
34:52
Privy and the end of another spoop gee
34:54
season here on the podcast we we
34:57
hope you enjoyed. I want to note, I believe my sister
35:00
in law is guilty of pulling a full candiru fish.
35:03
Kids peeing in the bottom of the shower and telling them that
35:06
it comes out the top. Move on her children.
35:10
Uh, so we're
35:12
all guilty of many things. We would
35:15
love for you to leave the show a rating and review. The five
35:18
star options are preferred. It helps people find the show.
35:21
Share the show with a friend online. You can share it direct
35:24
to social media. Text it to somebody. Cold
35:27
text to somebody. But for every rating and review
35:30
you leave us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
35:32
podcasts, we will donate a dollar to wounded
35:35
warriors and living water international as a reminder to keep
35:38
pooping in the free world. That free world was not always
35:41
free. And there are parts of this world that are
35:44
perhaps less free and definitely have less access
35:47
to clean water, cleaner water for all, a freer world
35:50
for all. Uh, so leave us a rating review. We'll get those
35:53
things out there. Uh, we have a shop. It's a
35:55
limited release sticker shop. If you go to the
35:58
website privy dash, cast.com, at the top, there's
36:01
a shop thing and there's a few run stickers. I am
36:04
working on a better store. But for now, this is
36:07
how we're going to attempt and see what interest
36:09
exists. Follow us on social media
36:12
icast. You can follow Randy bowles. If you
36:15
darendybowles, you can follow me. Hunter,
36:18
I'm owlette Seven. Uh, send us an email
36:20
privycastmail.com dot. We'd love to hear from you,
36:23
uh, episodes, suggestions, comments, concerns if you want to be on the
36:26
show, if you have a podcast of your own and you want to do
36:29
like an episode swap, I'd love to talk to you about those
36:32
things. Privycastmail.com
36:35
hit us up. Uh, this brings us to the end of another episode of
36:37
privy. Thanks to kevin and poddington and all the other people for
36:40
our Halloween music, our intro and outro music, and all our segment
36:43
music this week. You can find their information down below.
36:46
This brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Thank you for
36:49
listening. Keep pooping in this free world. Own your stank.
36:52
Avoid the candiru fish. Don't let him vampire
36:55
you. And now, as always, don't
36:58
forget to flush.