Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, we're talking about some scary
Speaker 1: urban legends about animals and showing you that there's nothing
Speaker 1: to fear. Well, okay, maybe there is, but it's not
Speaker 1: what you think. From getting swallowed by a whale to
Speaker 1: a small fish going where no fish has gone before,
Speaker 1: we're going to see what you should really be scared of.
Speaker 1: Discover this more as we answered the asual question, wow,
Speaker 1: are you telling me that Gray's anatomy might have stretched
Speaker 1: the truth? Joining me today is someone who puts the
Speaker 1: legend in urban legends, video essays, and snake lover Maggie
Speaker 1: may Fish. Hello, Katie, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm actually really excited for this episode because I'd.
Speaker 2: Like to be at greatly afraid. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't like to be afraid of things that I
Speaker 3: don't need to be afraid about, but I like being afraid,
Speaker 3: so I like to aim it at those responsible in
Speaker 3: this case animals.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, Like when I see a bear, I'm like,
Speaker 1: can I see, like how big your teeth. Let me
Speaker 1: measure your teeth, Let me measure your class. See if
Speaker 1: I really should be afraid of you?
Speaker 2: Okay, are you still cub or?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Are you hadn't?
Speaker 1: Oh? I see that you've like bitten my arm off.
Speaker 1: All right, you're right, you met criteria. You've even that
Speaker 1: I am afraid of you. Yes, indeed. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I think that there are a lot of urban legends
Speaker 1: about animals. Some of them are not really the truth,
Speaker 1: but there is something out there that is just as scary.
Speaker 1: So which is always funny to me, because I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense why we have urban legends, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun to be scared or rationalizing our already existing fears.
Speaker 1: But then when there's something that's real that actually does
Speaker 1: those things, that doesn't quite make it to be an
Speaker 1: urban legend, it's like, well, okay, it's right there, you
Speaker 1: got the truth. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, I don't know if you've seen this story yet,
Speaker 1: but someone in Cape Cod, a lobster diver, said he
Speaker 1: was swallowed by a whale.
Speaker 3: I did see this, and I saw that his fellow
Speaker 3: fisherman backed him up instaid.
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe that he was swallowed by a whale. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what do you think, Katie.
Speaker 1: So he said that he was completely inside the whale
Speaker 1: and that the whale shook its head a few times
Speaker 1: before spitting him back out. So I'm not going to
Speaker 1: call this man a liar, first of all, because he's
Speaker 1: a lobster diver in Cape Cod, and I don't that's
Speaker 1: not the demographic I want.
Speaker 2: Mad at me precisely.
Speaker 3: You could be the next gate that they put.
Speaker 2: But also I don't think.
Speaker 1: He really is lying. I think that, but I think
Speaker 1: he may have misinterpreted what actually happened to him, or
Speaker 1: at least maybe someone who was interviewing him put words
Speaker 1: in his mouth. I don't know, but I don't think
Speaker 1: he was actually swallowed by the whale. I think he
Speaker 1: was sort of swished around in a whale's mouth like
Speaker 1: some listing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say the way that he described it.
Speaker 3: The first image that came to mind is like wine tasting,
Speaker 3: you know, like like like the whale was curious and.
Speaker 2: Was like this human.
Speaker 3: You know, depending on where he's from, it could be
Speaker 3: very salty, human, could be very sweet, could have some
Speaker 3: undertoned So it seemed like he was just you know, uh,
Speaker 3: test tasting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy was like in his fifties, so it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of an aged human. It's
Speaker 1: got a nice bouquet, you know, swished it around his
Speaker 1: mouth and spat him out. Yeah, because there's actually no
Speaker 1: way for a humpback whale to actually swallow you whole.
Speaker 1: That's just not really gonna happen, at least not an
Speaker 1: adult like that. So humpback whales are not They are carnivores,
Speaker 1: but they don't want to eat humans because they actually
Speaker 1: eat little tiny things like krill and small fish. So
Speaker 1: anything the size of a human is not going to
Speaker 1: mean food to them, right.
Speaker 3: They would see it as like a floatation device, maybe
Speaker 3: a safety and floatation device.
Speaker 1: Right right, right exactly, some kind of strange curiosity to
Speaker 1: maybe taste but not eat. In fact, they don't really
Speaker 1: typically want to taste you. Even we're kind of just
Speaker 1: joking about the whale somalie thing. Probably what happened was
Speaker 1: a mistake. So probably it was taking in a big
Speaker 1: gulp of water to try to get some krill or
Speaker 1: get some small fish because they have baling. They don't
Speaker 1: even have teeth to bite you, and baling is like that.
Speaker 1: It's like it's got a bunch of brooms in its
Speaker 1: mouth or something, and it's it's not teeth, it's to
Speaker 1: filter out. They suck in a huge volume of water
Speaker 1: and then goosh it out, push it all out, and
Speaker 1: then trap all the fish uh in the uh in
Speaker 1: the balens. So like when it's a human, they can't
Speaker 1: even really bite your teeth, so they're not going to
Speaker 1: chew you up and swallow you. It's a total mistake.
Speaker 1: And their throat just can't accommodate a human. Like typically
Speaker 1: the throat is only about the size of a human
Speaker 1: fist like in diameter. It can ex yeah, especially for
Speaker 1: a huge whale that is beat because it's just for
Speaker 1: krill and tiny fish. It can expand to about the
Speaker 1: size or diameter of a pizza, And that's like the
Speaker 1: biggest it can really expand. And so for a human
Speaker 1: to fit through that like it would be a struggle
Speaker 1: because if it's about fifteen inches wide, like about the
Speaker 1: size of a pizza, human shoulders are about fifteen inches
Speaker 1: wide if not wider, and so to get down the
Speaker 1: whale throat you'd have to kind of like like put
Speaker 1: your arms forward, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you'd have to treat it like a slide, right,
Speaker 3: you have to like dive into it and like probably
Speaker 3: lubricate yourself a little bit so that you go down
Speaker 3: coat yourself in butter.
Speaker 1: And then probably the whale is gonna be highly resistant
Speaker 1: to this because it's not used to having something so
Speaker 1: big in its throat. So I feel like the human
Speaker 1: would have to be the one really trying to get
Speaker 1: down there for whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm already in the mouth, but I'm getting the stomach
Speaker 2: is not gonna be a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get down. Yeah. So, in fact, there's really only
Speaker 1: one whale in the world who could without chewing, just
Speaker 1: easily swallow a human hole, and that would be a
Speaker 1: sperm whale who can and have swallowed giant squid, and
Speaker 1: they've found like hold giant squid in their stomachs. But
Speaker 1: you're probably never ever going to be swallowed by a
Speaker 1: sperm whale simply because they don't live where humans can
Speaker 1: easily survive.
Speaker 2: So I didn't even think about that. It's a huge os. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only are they probably not going to pursue
Speaker 1: humans as prey because they just wouldn't really recognize the
Speaker 1: human as normal prey that they would encounter, but they
Speaker 1: also live. The reason you've like when you go whale watching,
Speaker 1: you typically don't see a sperm whale is they live
Speaker 1: at around ten thousand feet or a little over three
Speaker 1: thousand meters under the sea. So encounters with yes. We
Speaker 1: Actually it's a problem for biologists because we don't know
Speaker 1: that much about sperm whales, given they live so deep
Speaker 1: in the ocean, and it's not very easy to observe
Speaker 1: their behaviors, like I don't even think we know exactly
Speaker 1: like how their mating goes and all these things. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of mysteries about sperm whales and another
Speaker 1: deep sea living whales, and they do come up to
Speaker 1: breach to the surface, but they spend a lot of
Speaker 1: their time very deep in the ocean. So a human
Speaker 1: diver would have a lot more problems to worry about
Speaker 1: if they're hanging out at ten thousand feet under the
Speaker 1: ocean and getting.
Speaker 2: Swallows by way pressure. Yeah, yeah, sinking into their goals.
Speaker 1: I mean, their lungs and internal organs would turn into
Speaker 1: a kind of jello salad at that point. So the
Speaker 1: furthest a human can dive without getting their lungs crushed
Speaker 1: is about sixty feet or eighteen meters compared to three
Speaker 1: thousand meters or ten thousand feet, So you'd be very
Speaker 1: you'd already be pretty dead at that point. You'd be
Speaker 1: extremely dead.
Speaker 2: You'd be big dead. You'd be big dead, big.
Speaker 1: Dead hashtag big dead. Yeah. So, I mean, like the
Speaker 1: only time you would really encounter a sperm while is
Speaker 1: one of the rare times they come up to you know,
Speaker 1: because they are mammals, they do need to breathe, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that they would particularly be in a
Speaker 1: hunting mood at that at that time. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they're like coming up to take a breath and then
Speaker 1: they'll dive back down. They don't like hang around and like, ah,
Speaker 1: who's this is this lobster dive? Alt try this out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's why people don't typically get swallowed by sperm whales.
Speaker 1: So I mean, and I'm thinking about like Pinocchio, that
Speaker 1: whole thing. If Geppetto got swallowed by monster or whatever
Speaker 1: that whale was, like again, he would already be super
Speaker 1: dead and jellyfied at those depths, right Pinocchio, though, he's
Speaker 1: like made out of wood, so he could potentially go
Speaker 1: down to ten thousand feet under the sea without immediately dying.
Speaker 1: But as soon as his wish is granted to be
Speaker 1: a real boy, he would just instantly be crushed, yeah,
Speaker 1: by the weight of the ocean.
Speaker 3: So you're saying in the film Pinocchio and geppetto actually
Speaker 3: die within the whale and everything after that is yeah,
Speaker 3: just a fever dream of a puppet wooden boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, yeah, I don't think a whale's stomach is
Speaker 1: a big, empty, air filled cavern with fire.
Speaker 2: There's like, right, with a little fire and a pull.
Speaker 1: The problem with that is actually a whale deep diving whales,
Speaker 1: like sperm whales, will push out all air that isn't
Speaker 1: like all the air and their lungs and certainly like
Speaker 1: they're not going to have a lot of air in
Speaker 1: their tummies so that when they go down and come up,
Speaker 1: they don't get the bins, which as a result of
Speaker 1: like the the dissolving of air into the blood stream.
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's bad, bad for your cells, bad
Speaker 1: for your tissues. And then it's also their their lungs
Speaker 1: and because they do have lungs again, they breathe there
Speaker 1: when they come up, they exhale and then inhale with
Speaker 1: their blowholes, and they do fill their lungs up, but
Speaker 1: they have such a huge volume of blood their blood
Speaker 1: gets oxygenated, and then as they go down, they'reungs can
Speaker 1: collapse and then push out all the air so that
Speaker 1: but by that time their blood is already super enriched
Speaker 1: with oxygen, and their lungs are also their rib cages
Speaker 1: and lungs are sort of designed to collapse and expand,
Speaker 1: so so they can withstand that, whereas we we can't.
Speaker 2: Are frail bodies.
Speaker 1: Now it just becomes sort of I mean, like the
Speaker 1: exterior of our body probably won't look that weird. Uh,
Speaker 1: like maybe our eyes will like blood vessels in our
Speaker 1: eyes will burst or something, but inside it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a hor show. Yeah. Yeah, so actually, so do you
Speaker 1: know I sperm whales are called sperm whales.
Speaker 3: I feel like maybe I've been told, but I don't
Speaker 3: know what the truth is.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, Katie, Well, I'm gonna admit that I just
Speaker 1: learned this, so don't feel don't feel bad about obed.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, like, there's got to be like
Speaker 1: an innocuate because like it's like a little sperm whales.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, can yeah, go for it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think maybe it has something to do with
Speaker 3: this thing, like their blubber resembles sperm.
Speaker 1: You're very close. You're very very close. Yeah, ok yeah
Speaker 1: they are. Actually they used to be called, uh, spermachetti
Speaker 1: whales because inside the whales head cavity because like their
Speaker 1: heads are very fatty, they have uh, it's not just
Speaker 1: skull and like they have a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: area around their skull. They have an waxy, oily white
Speaker 1: substance called spermachetti. And it's called spermachetti because people thought
Speaker 1: this was the whales semen.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's not.
Speaker 1: Wow, it is not. Uh. It is in fact a
Speaker 1: sort of waxy, oily substance that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with reproduction. But because they were dirty sailors, they called
Speaker 1: them spermachetti whales and they made candles and stuff out
Speaker 1: of this. It was it's so crazy because they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is probably the whales sperm, let's make some candles
Speaker 1: out of it.
Speaker 2: Candles, family.
Speaker 1: But it is actually probably used by the whale as
Speaker 1: a resonance chamber in their head to aid in echolocation,
Speaker 1: or it could also in addition help with buoyancy. So
Speaker 1: regulating buoyancy because again, like a lot of animals, not
Speaker 1: just whales, but fish as well that are deep sea divers,
Speaker 1: they don't want any like gases inside their bodies because
Speaker 1: that is a problem when you're under those pressures and
Speaker 1: then you you know, so.
Speaker 2: So burst out your head instead of your body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get they get too well, they get too compressed,
Speaker 1: and then you can get the bins and so it
Speaker 1: just doesn't really work. So so fish off and instead
Speaker 1: of a swim bladder full of a gas like like
Speaker 1: fish that are more near the surface might have, they
Speaker 1: have like oily substances in it. So similarly, these sperm
Speaker 1: whales there, if they need to regulate their buoyancy, they
Speaker 1: don't want to have any like air filled chambers. They
Speaker 1: want to have an oily substance, a liquid that because
Speaker 1: liquid can't get that compressed, but air and gases can
Speaker 1: become compressed, and that's a big problem underwater.
Speaker 2: Hence sperm in the head.
Speaker 1: Hence sperm in the head exactly sperm the head. So
Speaker 1: basically you don't need to worry about being swallowed by
Speaker 1: a whale. It's not gonna happen, and this guy again,
Speaker 1: he was probably swished around in the whale's mouth, not
Speaker 1: really swallowed, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Whale in honor actually at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Right right, the guy was. The guy was a good
Speaker 1: sport about it too. He's like, I just like to
Speaker 1: apologize to the whale for like having to taste me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't, I don't really necessarily, I know that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, fishermen like to tell fish tales. But I
Speaker 1: think he probably something did happen. He probably did have
Speaker 1: an encounter with a humpback whale, but it was just
Speaker 1: a little it was a little love nibble by the
Speaker 1: by the whale or you know, a mistake. Probably It's
Speaker 1: like when you get a fly in your mouth. You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we are to whales. But can we be
Speaker 1: swallowed whole by an animal? Is there such a thing? Yes,
Speaker 1: we could be swallowed whole by a reticulated python.
Speaker 2: Boy snakes. Yeah, I love game.
Speaker 1: I know you do. You have a little python of
Speaker 1: your own, not a reticulated python. But uh, he's a
Speaker 1: ball python, right, yep, yep, baby, yeah, yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna he's not gonna swallow you whole anytime soon. But
Speaker 1: the reticulated python, while this is very rare, they can
Speaker 1: swallow a person whole, and in fact they have so.
Speaker 1: Giant reticulated pythons in Indonesia have been known to once
Speaker 1: in a while swallow a person and kill them. These
Speaker 1: pythons can grow up to twenty feet or six meters
Speaker 1: long and way up to one hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: pounds or seventy five kilograms, and their jaws can expand
Speaker 1: as far as its skin can stretch, So they don't
Speaker 1: have the same hinge joint that human jaws have. They don't,
Speaker 1: and I think it's often said that their jaws like dislocate.
Speaker 1: That's not really true because they're never located in the
Speaker 1: person place.
Speaker 2: They've never been located right right, They just aren't.
Speaker 1: They aren't connected like a human jaw. So they can
Speaker 1: expand their jaws much as their mouthskin can stretch, and
Speaker 1: they can swallow enormous prey such as pigs and even
Speaker 1: small cows sometimes. Eh. Yeah, Unfortunately, this means they can
Speaker 1: also swallow a human. In twenty eighteen, a fifty four
Speaker 1: year old woman was killed and swallowed whole by a
Speaker 1: reticulated python, and there have been other cases of farmers
Speaker 1: and kids potentially getting swallowed whole by these pythons. It
Speaker 1: is very rare. So again, even if you live in
Speaker 1: an area where there are reticulated pythons, your chances of
Speaker 1: being killed by one are very low. But when it
Speaker 1: does happen, it is very horrifying. So you might wonder like, well,
Speaker 1: how can you know, how could they just swallow a person? Like,
Speaker 1: how could they? Because you know, you would imagine like
Speaker 1: you'd run away, right, you know if a python's just
Speaker 1: like try, I.
Speaker 2: Feel like you try, right, you know, maybe h right?
Speaker 1: But they actually it doesn't seem like a python could
Speaker 1: like outrun a human. But they're actually ambush predators and
Speaker 1: they kill their pay Yeah, they kill their prey by
Speaker 1: suffocating their victims. So they sneak up on you and
Speaker 1: then they strike at their prey and bite down, not
Speaker 1: to inject venom because they don't actually have venom, but
Speaker 1: just to hold you in place. Well, they very like
Speaker 1: surprisingly quickly can wrap their coils around you, and then
Speaker 1: once you're in those coils, you're kind of doomed unless
Speaker 1: you have a machete and you have the strength to
Speaker 1: like fight it off where there are people around who
Speaker 1: can help extract you. If you're on your own and
Speaker 1: you don't have any means to defend yourself, you're kind
Speaker 1: of doomed because once those once it gives you that
Speaker 1: hug of death, it will literally crush you until you
Speaker 1: can't breathe and then you will asphyxiate. Which, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very scary. It's a little less scary than like being
Speaker 1: swallowed alive, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, say it kindly puts you out of your misery, very.
Speaker 1: Sweet of it, very kind of it. Yeah, well, kindness
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with it. It just doesn't want
Speaker 1: you to choke it, like to wiggle and fight while
Speaker 1: it's still inside of you, because that can kill. That
Speaker 1: can kill a reticulated python.
Speaker 3: You know, from the python's point of view, what a
Speaker 3: masterful way to eat you. Just you kill it, You
Speaker 3: crush until it's just a tiny little tube of you know,
Speaker 3: like you can stuck it down like a yogurt a gogurt.
Speaker 1: Well, to be fair, they don't. When they crush their
Speaker 1: their victim, often the body is actually pretty intact. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit horrible. But when they cut
Speaker 1: open a python. They can find bodies completely intact if
Speaker 1: they haven't started digesting them. And this includes unfortunately, human
Speaker 1: victims who they find their bodies intact, but they are
Speaker 1: sadly already passed away because they have been asphyxiated. So
Speaker 1: they actually swallow their prey head first because that's just easier,
Speaker 1: easier to cow.
Speaker 3: And when I feed my snake, yeah, always eats the
Speaker 3: head first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see it, like make it makes sense, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The body, well, it's like it's the arms, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it just kind of smooshes down pretty easy, and
Speaker 1: they have very strong muscle contractions to get it down
Speaker 1: into their very expandable bellies. Like you see one of
Speaker 1: these pythons, and when it has a big meal, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a human. It can be like
Speaker 1: a pig or a deer or something like. It's just
Speaker 1: there's this huge bulge in its stomach and then it
Speaker 1: can like not eat for like many many months like
Speaker 1: it like if it has a big I think it
Speaker 1: can even like hold off for like over a year
Speaker 1: like once it has a big meal like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, both for the human and for the snake, uh,
Speaker 1: if it does eat a human. This is ideal for
Speaker 1: the reticulated python. Obviously it's not ideal for human either,
Speaker 1: but clothes cannot be digested, so it will actually kill
Speaker 1: the reticulated python if like often it is actually killed
Speaker 1: by by humans because like they're looking for a missing person,
Speaker 1: they find a python with a suspicious bulge and then
Speaker 1: they kill the python. And when they do that, they're
Speaker 1: actually probably sparing the python a lot of misery because
Speaker 1: they are not going to be able to digest all
Speaker 1: of that all of those clothes, and they'll get a
Speaker 1: stomach impaction. They can digest bone, though it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: that they can like digest bone completely, but they like
Speaker 1: they can, like they goose it out, like they they
Speaker 1: push out sort of, they'll like regurgitate sort of the
Speaker 1: skeletal remains.
Speaker 3: That it too graphic, but yeah, when my uh little
Speaker 3: python goes to the bathroom, there's like he's regular a poop,
Speaker 3: but then there's like a little ball of white which
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, like fur and bone kind of a
Speaker 3: just yeah congewoled together, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I think they can actually poop it all out. I
Speaker 1: think they only regurgitate things if it's like too big
Speaker 1: or something. There's actually been problems with pet pythons when
Speaker 1: they eat like accidentally, like I think a towel is food,
Speaker 1: and then they eat it and then they have to
Speaker 1: be taken to the vat for the towel to be
Speaker 1: pulled out.
Speaker 2: I've seen that video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, baby, baby, of course, we feel so sorry for
Speaker 1: for the python that ate a human. I mean no,
Speaker 1: I also I feel very very bad for the human victims.
Speaker 1: It's just a sad it's a sad thing all around,
Speaker 1: Like the python shouldn't be eating the people, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's just it's just it's a tragedy every
Speaker 1: way you look at it. When I say, like this
Speaker 1: is what you really should be afraid of, not really,
Speaker 1: it's such a rare event. It's so newsworthy because in
Speaker 1: the last decade, I think only like a hand, like
Speaker 1: you know, you could count on one hand the number
Speaker 1: of people who have been swallowed by a python. Uh
Speaker 1: so it's it's really not something that you have to
Speaker 1: worry about too much. But you know, if a python
Speaker 1: like starts to like wrap around you, you gotta take
Speaker 1: that seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah you guess there, you know, at that moment, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you gotta start thinking.
Speaker 1: But it's but when it happens to human it's actually
Speaker 1: it's like you may think, like, well, why don't they
Speaker 1: like try to get away, It actually does happen surprisingly fast.
Speaker 1: So once they like bite down on you, especially if
Speaker 1: you're like a if you're older or smaller, like, as
Speaker 1: soon as they bite down on you, and they can
Speaker 1: get around you really quickly, and it can be really
Speaker 1: difficult to get away. So it's a really, really terrible situation.
Speaker 1: So next time you you feed your cute little.
Speaker 2: Snake, remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I don't I don't want people
Speaker 1: to be to hate snakes. They're they're really cool, really
Speaker 1: cool animals. This only happens very occasionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's more like they you know, they don't
Speaker 2: know what they're not, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't understand. They don't you know, they just sneak.
Speaker 1: They're just little noodles who like to eat, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. They don't know that they're eating someone's grandma.
Speaker 1: So we talked about snakes, and now we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about spiders, two of the people's most favorite animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: spiders are often really maligned. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: stories about spiders how scary they are. Typically though they're
Speaker 1: really not out to get you.
Speaker 3: Right they eat mosquitoes, which I have always seen as uh,
Speaker 3: you know, very positive.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're typically the ones that are actually out to
Speaker 1: get spiders. There's this recent story in Perth, Australia. Police
Speaker 1: were called by a neighbor of someone who heard a
Speaker 1: man yelling why won't you die and the sounds of
Speaker 1: a crying toddler. So police rushed to the house and
Speaker 1: it turned out the man was just trying to kill
Speaker 1: a large spiders.
Speaker 3: Oh that is really funny, he apologized to police.
Speaker 1: He said he had a rachnophobia and was panicking, and
Speaker 1: of course the toddler was crying because daddy was scared
Speaker 1: and there was a giants.
Speaker 2: There was a giant spider.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So I think I think it's somewhat relatable thing.
Speaker 1: I don't like to kill spiders, but when they are
Speaker 1: really large, like alarmingly large, and I know they're gonna
Speaker 1: startle me, I try to at least get them out
Speaker 1: of the house because they're like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: I don't like to be startled by a spider. I
Speaker 1: don't like to sort of look down and there's like
Speaker 1: one on my arm.
Speaker 3: That freaks me out, right, right if you Yeah, if
Speaker 3: there's one big enough in the house that I notice it,
Speaker 3: I would like it out of.
Speaker 2: The house, presumably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's smaller than a quarter, you can hang out, buddy,
Speaker 1: it's fine, you know what, let's just chill.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want to be found at that point.
Speaker 1: But there is a myth about spiders actually a couple months.
Speaker 1: One is that like you eat spiders in your sleep,
Speaker 1: which it's just not going to happen. Spiders don't want
Speaker 1: to be eaten by you. They don't want to get
Speaker 1: in there. No, So that's that's there's really not truth
Speaker 1: to that. The other one is that spiders will lay
Speaker 1: eggs in your ears or your brain.
Speaker 3: Very popular scary stories to tell in the dark story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a spider lays eggs in someone's
Speaker 1: skin or something. Is that the one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she like thinks she has his it.
Speaker 1: It's just spiders. Yeah, yeah, So spiders. Fortunately, all the
Speaker 1: spiders out there, they don't want to do that. They
Speaker 1: don't want to be inside you. That's the last thing
Speaker 1: they want. Very rarely a spider might crawl in your ear.
Speaker 1: That is not because they want to lay eggs. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna lay eggs in your brain. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: like drill a hole into your skull. They just think
Speaker 1: your ear is like a little cozy spot. They mistake
Speaker 1: it for like a little nook or cranny. They don't
Speaker 1: realize you're alive. If they did, they would freak out.
Speaker 1: Like it'd be like if you were seeking refuge in
Speaker 1: a cave and then you realize the cave is like
Speaker 1: the ear of a gargantuan monster, you would freak out,
Speaker 1: you'd be scared. Yeah, this doesn't happen very often, but
Speaker 1: when a spider crawls into someone's ear, it's a complete mistake.
Speaker 1: They're not there to lay eggs. And if that ever happens,
Speaker 1: or if any bug crawls in your ear, do not panic.
Speaker 1: Don't like try to dig it out with your fingers.
Speaker 1: Don't go in there with tweezers or like a cotton
Speaker 1: swe because that can either damage your ear or you
Speaker 1: can like scare the insect and it will actually crawl deeper,
Speaker 1: not because it's trying to like get into your brain,
Speaker 1: because you're scaring it because you're like right, like if
Speaker 1: you're again. Imagine, you know, go take a trip down
Speaker 1: to imagination station. Imagine you're in a cave. It's like
Speaker 1: it's kind of cold outside, and you find this cozy
Speaker 1: little cave. You go inside, and it's nice and warm.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's like weirdly warm. You're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is nice and cozy. And then suddenly you like hear
Speaker 1: this low rumbling and then this giant appendage come in
Speaker 1: to try to like grab you. You're gonna like run
Speaker 1: deeper into the cave and then like the giant monster
Speaker 1: and side is gonna freak out even more. So what
Speaker 1: you should do is just go to a doctor.
Speaker 2: What you should do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you think there's like a bug in
Speaker 1: your ear or something, go to a doctor and they
Speaker 1: will be able to remove it without like shoving anything
Speaker 1: probably in your ear. Usually I think what doctors do
Speaker 1: is or they might put something in your ear, but
Speaker 1: they're a doctor and they're allowed to do that. So
Speaker 1: usually what they will do is they'll actually flush it
Speaker 1: out with some sailine and the little spider or whatever
Speaker 1: insect will just come out surfing on a wave of sailine.
Speaker 1: Because that way, that way just like kind of flushes
Speaker 1: it out and then it's it will also like want
Speaker 1: to get out, like it'll swim to the surface of
Speaker 1: the sline if there's water in there. And it's just
Speaker 1: a much less traumatic way to get a bug out
Speaker 1: of your ear than to go after it with tweezers.
Speaker 1: But also this is probably never going to happen to you.
Speaker 1: It's extremely rare. I mean, this is why it's newsworthy,
Speaker 1: Like it's very very rare bug goods in your ear.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to be afraid of spiders. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't lay eggs under your skin. They don't
Speaker 1: lay eggs in your ears. But before you breathe a
Speaker 1: sigh of relief, okaty, there are insects that will do
Speaker 1: this and one of the one of the creepiest ones
Speaker 1: in my opinion, are screw worms. So you know, this
Speaker 1: is the part where I warn you this section is
Speaker 1: gonna get a little gross. You know, if you want
Speaker 1: to skip ahead, like if you have trip of phobia
Speaker 1: or fear of like insects, like parasites, human you know,
Speaker 1: kind of parasites, you can join back in at part three.
Speaker 1: At we're actually in part three, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a fish that allegedly swims up people's urethras. So
Speaker 1: if that also sounds too gross, maybe the rest of
Speaker 1: this episode isn't for you, and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: But if you want to skip the screw worm section
Speaker 1: and you want to come back just for the penis
Speaker 1: fish one, you know, join us back in at this
Speaker 1: time stamp take it away, Future Katie, pretty one, all right,
Speaker 1: So for those of you Katie, thanks, thanks to you, Katie,
Speaker 1: and now back to past Katie. So now we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about screw worms and how horrifying they really are.
Speaker 1: So these are New World screw worm flies which are
Speaker 1: found throughout the humid areas of the Americas. So the
Speaker 1: adult version looks benign, just like a standard fly. I
Speaker 1: in the show notes, I have included a picture of
Speaker 1: the adult in the larva and absolutely no other pictures
Speaker 1: of what happens with screwing.
Speaker 2: You for that, thank you for If you're.
Speaker 1: Curious what they look like but you don't want to
Speaker 1: see like body horror stuff, you can look at the
Speaker 1: dock link below and there's no body horror stuff, just
Speaker 1: the fly and just the maggot. If you're curious to
Speaker 1: see what they look like. I recommend against googling if
Speaker 1: you are grossed out by you know, medical pictures and
Speaker 1: body horror stuff, you don't want to see that. Again,
Speaker 1: the adult looks pretty innocuous, just like sadies.
Speaker 2: Both look very Yeah. Normal, You got a normal larva,
Speaker 2: a normal fly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they're called screwworms because the law you can
Speaker 1: see the larva is kind of like segmented, so it's
Speaker 1: like kind of I guess screw like in a way.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like tapered and it's got like it
Speaker 1: looks maybe like it has screw threads or something, but
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not that alarming looking really, no, not
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: I just all that going around, I'd be like, checks out,
Speaker 2: that's a book.
Speaker 1: That's fine, you know, not start to worry about it
Speaker 1: getting inside your body, but you probably should. So. Female
Speaker 1: screwflies will lay their eggs in the wounds or bodily
Speaker 1: openings of animals, including on occasion, humans, So the eggs
Speaker 1: only take about twenty four hours to hatch, and the
Speaker 1: larva will start to feed on the flesh and fluids
Speaker 1: of their host. So on at least one occasion, they
Speaker 1: have gotten into a human ear and on multiplesis they
Speaker 1: have gotten inside human skin. Usually like if you have
Speaker 1: a a open wound or something. Uh, it's the The
Speaker 1: flies don't like bite you and put it inside you,
Speaker 1: but they look for an opening, like a literal opening,
Speaker 1: wait for a literal opening. But this could even be
Speaker 1: something like in newborn animals. Often like the infect livestock
Speaker 1: and so a newborn calf or something, they go for
Speaker 1: the the belly button because they're attracted to the smell of.
Speaker 2: Blood.
Speaker 1: Yes exactly, so like for they don't they won't typically
Speaker 1: go for like an adult's belly button because that's healed over.
Speaker 1: But for a newborn calf, it's like it still smells
Speaker 1: kind of bloody. They go in there and it's it's gross.
Speaker 1: You don't want to see it. This condition of a
Speaker 1: larva living inside human tissue is known medically as miasis,
Speaker 1: and it is gross and bad and you don't want
Speaker 1: it to happen bad And my official medical opinion it's
Speaker 1: gross and bad.
Speaker 3: Agree in my official non medical opinion, it's gross and bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, the way that screw worms differ from most
Speaker 1: maggots is that screw worms actually feed on live tissue,
Speaker 1: not just dead necrotic tissue.
Speaker 3: So I was gonna say, because like you know, growing
Speaker 3: up in Michigan, every once in a while, yeah, you'd
Speaker 3: see like a roadkill or something, and speaking from mixer your.
Speaker 2: Kid, you go over look at the roadkill. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like covered in maggot.
Speaker 1: You put a stick and you're like, hey, yeah, i'm learning,
Speaker 1: I'm learning. Yeah, So maggot infested wounds, while disgusting, is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a horrible problem. In fact, maggots can actually
Speaker 1: help with wound healings sometimes, not that I recommend letting
Speaker 1: your wound get to the point where it's they eat
Speaker 1: maggots without dead flush, if they just eat the dead flush.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there are like medical grade maggots that
Speaker 1: are like sterile that on occasion, very rarely that it's
Speaker 1: not the typical use of them, but if you have
Speaker 1: some necrotic tissue problems where it's hard to hard to
Speaker 1: it's called debriding the the necrotic tissue. So it's like
Speaker 1: when there's dead tissue and uh, you want to like
Speaker 1: get rid of the dead tissue so it doesn't become infected.
Speaker 1: And so they can actually use medical maggots to to
Speaker 1: get rid of that dead tissue. So so uh, Magots
Speaker 1: in general, while disgusting, are not really that dangerous actually,
Speaker 1: but screw worms will eat healthy tissue and that's very
Speaker 1: very bad. So uh. Screw worms will inside their host,
Speaker 1: which is typically not humans. Humans are not their primary target.
Speaker 1: It's usually other mammals. It can even be smaller mammals.
Speaker 1: The if it's a small enough mammal like something like
Speaker 1: a rodent or like a baby livestock or something, they
Speaker 1: can even feed on the live tissue of their host
Speaker 1: until their host dies.
Speaker 2: Whoa.
Speaker 1: And very rarely humans can die of screw worm infections.
Speaker 1: Usually that's it's because of not because they've like eaten
Speaker 1: away at too much tissue, but it's because of getting
Speaker 1: an infection and the result from that. Before you panic,
Speaker 1: The US eradicated screw worms in nineteen eighty two, So
Speaker 1: screw worms are endemic to the Americas, so mostly like
Speaker 1: in sort of the southern areas of the US and
Speaker 1: in South America. Again, so in nineteen eighty two, the
Speaker 1: US eradicated screw worms. They actually use something called the
Speaker 1: sterile insect technique where sterile males so males that can't reproduce,
Speaker 1: are released to flood the dating pool. Yes, oh wow,
Speaker 1: and they steal mates from fertile males. So it's basically
Speaker 1: like you release all these infertile males and then they
Speaker 1: compete with fertile males, and so some of these females
Speaker 1: will mate with the sterile males and then blow their
Speaker 1: chance to have offspring, and then the next generation there's
Speaker 1: less of them, and then you repeat this over and
Speaker 1: over again until you can like basically decimate a population.
Speaker 1: There was actually an outbreak of screworms in Florida in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, So just because we got rid of them
Speaker 1: for the most part doesn't mean that they don't sometimes
Speaker 1: come back. I think that it was a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: good good job for eradicating Yeah. Yeah, which, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about the sort of you know,
Speaker 1: food pyramid of screworms to know like what effect that
Speaker 1: would have or had on the environment. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where it's like you balance
Speaker 1: like the human need.
Speaker 3: Of these right over the nature you know, creating worms
Speaker 3: that can you know, burrow into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was like a big problem with livestock too,
Speaker 1: not just like humans so big, big problem with like
Speaker 1: our food chain. But on the other hand, it's it's
Speaker 1: sort of like I wouldn't say I don't think that
Speaker 1: these insects should go extinct, because I think that would
Speaker 1: represent a big problem. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: don't think they ever will. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: with It's kind of like with mosquitoes, when we control
Speaker 1: mosquito populations, it's like, well, mosquitoes are actually very important
Speaker 1: for UH to sustain a lot of species that eat
Speaker 1: them as food. But I also don't think we're ever
Speaker 1: gonna They're never gonna go extinct. But but it's important
Speaker 1: to be careful because this like sterile insect technique is
Speaker 1: very powerful.
Speaker 2: Right, we definitely don't want to overheat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's only use it on a species that you know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Wasn't asking for it, Yeah no.
Speaker 1: And so Guatemala, Belize, and El Savador also eradicated their
Speaker 1: screwworm population. Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Jamaica are
Speaker 1: still fighting to eliminate their populations. So it's not as
Speaker 1: much of a problem as it used to be in
Speaker 1: the past, but that doesn't mean there's zero chance of
Speaker 1: having an issue with them. There's actually what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is there was a nineteen seventy seven short story called
Speaker 1: The Screwfly Solution by Alice Sheldon. It was a sci
Speaker 1: fi short story that described a horrific epidemic of men
Speaker 1: murdering women, and men starting these cults that were like
Speaker 1: these religious cults saying like women are evil and would
Speaker 1: murder them for these religious reasons, whereas other men just
Speaker 1: like would do it randomly, and some men who were
Speaker 1: like good people like isolated themselves to try to prevent
Speaker 1: themselves from murdering women. But eventually, like, only a few
Speaker 1: women are left surviving on Earth. Those major spoilers for
Speaker 1: the short story if you want to just read it
Speaker 1: instead of listening to me describe it. One of the
Speaker 1: women discovers that the cause of this murder epidemic is
Speaker 1: that an alien species is using a version of the
Speaker 1: sterile insect technique on humans. So an alien species is
Speaker 1: causing men's sex drives to turn into murderous impulses because
Speaker 1: the aliens want to eradicate humans so they can live
Speaker 1: on Earth instead.
Speaker 2: So oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not against it.
Speaker 1: God, wait a minute, how many eyes do you have, Maggie, or.
Speaker 2: How many normal landing for.
Speaker 1: It's It was also used in another's inspiration for another story.
Speaker 1: In Carmen Mola's twenty eighteen detective novel Nova, Gitana describes
Speaker 1: the screwworm being used as a very slow murder weapon
Speaker 1: by the murderer inserting eggs into a victim's body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a fun like you know, it's a
Speaker 2: fun villain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, weapon, Yeah yeah, No. I love it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I think that they have been a great inspiration
Speaker 1: for for some some fun, fun stories, fun light hearted stories,
Speaker 1: you know, a little little light romp about aliens killing
Speaker 1: off humans and and you know, flesh eating larva being
Speaker 1: used as a murder weapon. Real fun stuff. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: checks out, It all checks out. Well. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we're actually going to talk about something a little less gruesome.
Speaker 1: Simply a fish that supposedly swims up your urethra.
Speaker 2: That'sidy stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and eats penises. It's totally fine.
Speaker 2: Just you know what, I don't happen, so this is Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 1: Worried at all. So, Maggie, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people have heard of the Kanduru penis fish. Uh. It
Speaker 1: is a fish that allegedly will swim up your peace
Speaker 1: stream and go inside of your peahole. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: it's typically the idea is that it goes inside a penis.
Speaker 1: So if you have a penis and you go to
Speaker 1: a river in the Amazon where these fish live, allegedly,
Speaker 1: the story goes, you pee, You've got a nice I guess,
Speaker 1: a nice strong stream of urine. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I say it's warm, so presumably that's part of it.
Speaker 1: But you must it's gotta be like a steady stream.
Speaker 1: I guess. It can't be like drunk peeing right where
Speaker 1: you just spread. Yeah, and then this little fish, apparently,
Speaker 1: according to legend, will swim up this pea stream, go
Speaker 1: right inside your pea hole. Maybe you don't even notice it,
Speaker 1: I guess, and then grow inside there and either eat
Speaker 1: your penis or just hang out in there. That part's unclear.
Speaker 1: This was made popular by an episode of Grey's Anatomy
Speaker 1: noted very accurate medical show.
Speaker 2: Very accurate. I actually only watched that show to diagnose. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not even my friends to me yet.
Speaker 1: I'm basically like a doctor now, and I think you
Speaker 1: have a rare case of necrotizing fasciitis. It's like I
Speaker 1: have a headache. Yeah, I think you should go to
Speaker 1: the hospital.
Speaker 2: Also, there's any hot doctors just hanging out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is kind of. It does give you the
Speaker 1: sense that like every doctor is gonna be super super hot,
Speaker 1: where it's like not to say doctors aren't hot. Most
Speaker 1: doctors are just your regular you know, like all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at you, you know, and now
Speaker 1: hand me the four steps. Wow, it's getting hot in here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to unbutton my lab coat.
Speaker 3: Well I take out the fish that's in your penis.
Speaker 1: So a little background, A man comes in with like
Speaker 1: he's unable to urinate. He's got some swelling and some
Speaker 1: pain and the whole you know, sort of penis area.
Speaker 1: And the doctors are scratching their heads like what's going on?
Speaker 1: And so they had they could they ruled out some
Speaker 1: other common urinary problems, and so they took an X
Speaker 1: ray and they're trying to make sense of this X ray.
Speaker 1: And here here it is. Here is there very realistic
Speaker 1: doctor discussion.
Speaker 2: The penis fish.
Speaker 1: Sorry, so let me wind it back a little longer.
Speaker 2: Amazing peanuts fish.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna wind it back just a little further.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Looks like some kind of foreign object. Ouch.
Speaker 2: That almost looks like a skeleton. It's skeleton, like, definitely
Speaker 2: skeleton those barbs.
Speaker 1: No, it can't be.
Speaker 2: It could be. It looks like a teeny tiny catfish.
Speaker 2: See there, those of spines. This is a kangaroo fish.
Speaker 2: The penis fish. This guy has the penis fish in
Speaker 2: his in his.
Speaker 1: The penis fish. This guy has the pus fish. It
Speaker 1: is pis h he's got the penis fish. Yeah, beauty
Speaker 1: the music as well, record scratch. I bet you're wondering
Speaker 1: how I got here.
Speaker 2: That's me.
Speaker 1: She's zooming on the extra of the fish. It's like,
Speaker 1: you see that, that's me. I'm the kangaroo. I wonder
Speaker 1: how I got here? Well it all started when God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's this is this real? Uh? It's this is
Speaker 1: a real fish. What's going on? What are these fake
Speaker 1: doctors talking about? Well, so the kangaroo is a very
Speaker 1: real fish, but the rumors of its affinity for the
Speaker 1: human penis may be slightly overstated, or maybe greatly overstated.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a puzzle. So the kangaroo is
Speaker 1: a small then catfish found in freshwater rivers of the Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's also called a toothpickfish because they're so slender. So
Speaker 1: they can grow up as adults to be up to
Speaker 1: seven inches or two point five centimeters long, but younger
Speaker 1: ones can be very small and thin, so maybe just
Speaker 1: a bit thicker than a toothpick. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that while they're little, they could like get up inside
Speaker 1: of your urethra if you're constantly terreen. Yeah, if you well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a line. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: do we absolutely know about kangaroos. They are bloodsuckers. They
Speaker 1: will enter the gill cavities of fish and suck on
Speaker 1: the fish's blood. So to anchor themselves, they will actually
Speaker 1: erect spines that they have on their own gills to
Speaker 1: stick inside the gills of their victims so they can
Speaker 1: go in there and suck on blood. And it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of weird because they can sort of like a leech,
Speaker 1: like it becomes sort of engorged with blood. Start off
Speaker 1: really thin, and then they get like this full belly
Speaker 1: of blood. It's pretty weird, but you know, onto the
Speaker 1: legend it's that they will swim up your I guess,
Speaker 1: very healthy peace stream and into your urethra if you
Speaker 1: have a penis. Now, this legend has been around for centuries.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen or in the eighteen hundreds, biologist CFP.
Speaker 1: Von Martius, who was, I guess, a German biologist studying
Speaker 1: stuff in the Amazon, he was told about a fish
Speaker 1: that was attracted to the smell of urine and may
Speaker 1: swim up your peehole. Now, the problem with this legend
Speaker 1: is that there's no evidence that kangaroos are attracted at
Speaker 1: all to urine, and they seem to hunt by sight,
Speaker 1: not by smell, so that doesn't really check out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty five, another biologist was regaled with tales
Speaker 1: of a fish that would swim up pea stream. But
Speaker 1: the explanation of the fish being able to traverse the
Speaker 1: stream of urine actually defies the laws of physics. That's
Speaker 1: not possible.
Speaker 2: That's not possible.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 1: It would need a type of propulsion. The fluid dynamics
Speaker 1: of it don't make sense. Yeah, that no note of sense.
Speaker 1: It's this idea that like a salmon, could you know,
Speaker 1: like like salmon's who like jump up a waterfall? But
Speaker 1: somehow you could do that, like in a stream of pea,
Speaker 1: and it would just like swim up. It actually impossible
Speaker 1: from a fluid dynamic and fish physics perspective. It's not
Speaker 1: that maybe this aspect of the legend comes from fish
Speaker 1: gathering at the site where the pea enters the water,
Speaker 1: because like if you're peeing in the water, it creates
Speaker 1: this little disturbance on the surface of the water and
Speaker 1: fish may swim up to it. Not because they like
Speaker 1: the smell of pea like their little freaks, or that
Speaker 1: they want to swim up your peace stream magically using
Speaker 1: their magic fluid dynamic stuff. It's actually just because any
Speaker 1: kind of small disturbance on the surface of the water
Speaker 1: may attract some fish because they're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: is this like a fly or something that got stuck
Speaker 1: on the surface of the water. What is it? They're curious.
Speaker 1: They think maybe it's food, Maybe it's something of interest
Speaker 1: to them. Could a kangaroo ever swim inside of your urethra?
Speaker 1: I don't think it could do it by traveling up
Speaker 1: a peace stream if you're like in the water, could
Speaker 1: it potentially get inside like a penis's peahole? Maybe, but
Speaker 1: it's not certain whether we really have any documented evidence
Speaker 1: of this. We're going to talk about the only case
Speaker 1: that maybe the evidence of that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: But one thing we do know is that despite this
Speaker 1: being sort of pitched as something only people with penises
Speaker 1: have to worry about, if you've got of age, you're
Speaker 1: actually much more likely to have to tingle with the canda.
Speaker 1: It's not that it's gonna go up your urethra, because
Speaker 1: you know, female anatomy, the vagina is not the urethra.
Speaker 1: The urethra is separated from the vagina. The entrance of
Speaker 1: the vagina just goes up into the vaginal cavity and
Speaker 1: then there's the cervix that blocks that from the uterus.
Speaker 1: So there are a few documented cases in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds of the kangaroo entering the vagina, but it
Speaker 1: was easily extracted, didn't really harm the person at all,
Speaker 1: And that's a bit easier to accomplish than going up
Speaker 1: a narrow urethra.
Speaker 2: There's a little more loom, you know, right exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1: Little mirror. And again this was probably a mistake. The
Speaker 1: kangaroo was thinking that it was going in the gills
Speaker 1: of a fish, that it normally preys on. But oops,
Speaker 1: it's you know, a vagina.
Speaker 2: Yep, oops, yeah, dang it.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety seven, the only documented case of
Speaker 1: a kangaroo entering a penis occurred in Brazil. The twenty
Speaker 1: three year old man claimed a kangaroo jumped from the
Speaker 1: river into his penis as he was urinating. This incident
Speaker 1: is contentious for a number of reasons, which were thoroughly
Speaker 1: examined by American marine biologist Steven Spotty, who investigated and
Speaker 1: wrote a book in two thousand and two called Kandaroo
Speaker 1: Life and Legend of the Bloodsucking Catfishes. So he looked
Speaker 1: at this story and examined some of the problems with
Speaker 1: how the incident was presented. He didn't say like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a total lie or anything. He just these things,
Speaker 1: these aspects of the story don't quite make sense. So
Speaker 1: either there's some mistakes in like how this this uh
Speaker 1: was recorded, or some misunderstandings, or maybe some aspects of
Speaker 1: it were made up. You know, people have been known
Speaker 1: to lie about things.
Speaker 2: On to be human is to err yeah, describing what
Speaker 2: came up, to be humanist.
Speaker 1: To yes, to be humanists, to err on what went
Speaker 1: up your penis hole. So the victim claimed that the
Speaker 1: kangaroo leapt out of the water via his peace stream
Speaker 1: into his urethra. So this is the typical story in
Speaker 1: the folk tale. But again, like we described earlier, this
Speaker 1: version has been thoroughly disproved.
Speaker 2: Just by p physics.
Speaker 1: It can't really happen. The more likely way of this
Speaker 1: happening would be if you are waist deep in your
Speaker 1: your penis is actually in the water, then perhaps like
Speaker 1: it could go up inside. It would have to be
Speaker 1: very small a juvenile. But you know, maybe, but this
Speaker 1: isn't what he described. So either he was just mistakenly
Speaker 1: thought that's when it went up, like maybe it got
Speaker 1: in earlier and he didn't realize it got in when
Speaker 1: he was like submerged, and he just assumed this is
Speaker 1: how it happened, or he was like not telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and just say,
Speaker 1: like he this is what he figured happened, but it's
Speaker 1: that's not what really happened. Like it must have happened
Speaker 1: when it like went up when he was like submerged
Speaker 1: in water. So not necessarily lying, but there's no way
Speaker 1: for it to actually go into the peace stream, so
Speaker 1: he would be mistaken about that, right. Another weird thing
Speaker 1: is that the fish specimen from the alleged incident was preserved,
Speaker 1: but its head was too big to fit inside a urethra.
Speaker 1: So the timeline is off because he was saying he
Speaker 1: had this happen right after, like, like, he went to
Speaker 1: the doctor pretty quickly after this incident, so in order
Speaker 1: for the fish to get inside it would require way
Speaker 1: more force than the fish would be capable of doing. Again, like,
Speaker 1: the only way for this to happen without without it
Speaker 1: just being completely made up, would be this person mistakenly
Speaker 1: thought this was when he was infected with it, but when,
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot earlier, a small like a baby
Speaker 1: one went up in and then like grew inside of
Speaker 1: him somehow worse worse, which again is just conjecture because
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's possible, right, But I'm just again,
Speaker 1: I'm trying, I'm trying to present the version of events
Speaker 1: in which like, it's not just like a big lie,
Speaker 1: it's just a misunderstanding, which often happens when it comes
Speaker 1: to you know, when a penis or a fish goes
Speaker 1: in your penis. Yeah, the doctor who documented the case
Speaker 1: claimed that the kangaroo is attracted to urine, which again,
Speaker 1: that's a myth that has long been debunked. So already
Speaker 1: this doctor has made a mistake in you know, his
Speaker 1: own understanding of the situation. The same doctor claimed that
Speaker 1: the kangaroo had chewed its way into the victims scrotum,
Speaker 1: but a kangaroo does not have the jaw wars to
Speaker 1: do such a thing. So again there's a couple of
Speaker 1: fishy things. No pun intended with what the doctor is
Speaker 1: claiming here, So uh, doctor Penish fish again. Oh, I
Speaker 1: forgot to mention the doctor and the Grayson Out of
Speaker 1: Me episode that the urologist who is examining this was
Speaker 1: called doctor Fish or.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm yo, no, wow, that's pretty awesome. Actually, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Your name is Mayfish. So obviously you have to become
Speaker 1: a urologist and specialize in the kangaroo fish because that's
Speaker 1: how it works.
Speaker 2: That's how it works. And actually it's pretty excited to
Speaker 2: find my calling.
Speaker 1: Right and now this video essay, you have a great
Speaker 1: calling on YouTube, But like, was that really your true
Speaker 1: calling or was it penis?
Speaker 2: It was all just set up for me to discover this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that like, absolutely a penis fish.
Speaker 2: He's got a pus fish. His penissh penis fantastic.
Speaker 1: In this like quote unquote real life incident, the doctor
Speaker 1: again made another spurious claim, saying that he had to
Speaker 1: clip the fish's spines to extract it. But all of
Speaker 1: those spines were intact on the preserved specimens, so that's
Speaker 1: not lining up either. So there was a sistoscopy video.
Speaker 1: So a sistoscope is a small camera in light that
Speaker 1: goes into tight body spaces for surgeries or exams, and
Speaker 1: there is a video of it. But in this video,
Speaker 1: it shows the fish carcass being pulled out by forceps,
Speaker 1: which the author of this book contends would be impossible
Speaker 1: given the deserve specimens spikes being intact, because they would
Speaker 1: like kind of snag on something. So maybe the specimen
Speaker 1: is not the actual one or something something is going on,
Speaker 1: But this video does exist, So it's like, well, what
Speaker 1: what is like did they like fake this video to
Speaker 1: go along with all this stuff or are there only
Speaker 1: certain aspects of the story that are that are not
Speaker 1: quite being told accurately. So I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is conclusively disproving the Candoro story, because I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure why both the doctor and patient would make everything up,
Speaker 1: like just for attention or something, and they'd have to
Speaker 1: be working together to make it all up. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's like a hundred percent hoax. It could be,
Speaker 1: but my my guess would be it's like it's only
Speaker 1: partially true and then there's you know, some exaggeration going on.
Speaker 1: I think this may be, I mean, it could. It
Speaker 1: could be a hoax though, because again, this is a
Speaker 1: this is a folk tale that has long been you know,
Speaker 1: so it's got this sort of popularity. But sometimes folk
Speaker 1: tales have a grain of truth in it, so there
Speaker 1: could be, uh, you know, this could have an origin
Speaker 1: not just in complete like like some so you could
Speaker 1: have some truth to it. Right, So if the kangaroo
Speaker 1: goes up, you know, if you're like submerged in the
Speaker 1: water and then it enters that way and then it's
Speaker 1: like it goes in when it's really small and then
Speaker 1: it just gets stuck and then gets bigger or something
Speaker 1: later on. Maybe that's what happens, and then these other
Speaker 1: aspects of the myth are are made up just because
Speaker 1: that's people assume this is what happens that you like uh,
Speaker 1: that that it swims up your peace stream or something.
Speaker 1: But I don't I don't know, because like I don't
Speaker 1: even like how would if something is like growing inside,
Speaker 1: like a little fish is growing inside, Like it seems
Speaker 1: like that was still obstruct you're, uh, you're urinary flow,
Speaker 1: so it seems like you'd have problems for while. I
Speaker 1: just don't know. I I'm very skeptical, though, I'm skeptical, right, like.
Speaker 3: Freaking animal freak accidents happened, but yeah, this seems like
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, yeah, it'd be hard if you fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's certainly it's not a fish that hunts
Speaker 1: down human penises and goes inside to hit the penis.
Speaker 1: That part is absolutely not true. If it does happen,
Speaker 1: it's an accident. But there is such a thing as
Speaker 1: parasitic castration. It's just not something that happens to humans.
Speaker 1: Thank god.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank goodness. That revealed terrible.
Speaker 1: If you're a crab or another type of animal, this
Speaker 1: may happen. Uh, and we'll probably even like we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show Carsonization, like the universe trends towards crabs.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day will evolve into crabs and we're going
Speaker 1: to have to worry about the crab going at eating parasite,
Speaker 1: the Seculina carcini. So the Seculina carsony is a parasitic barnacle.
Speaker 1: I know, you wouldn't think like barnacles could be parasites.
Speaker 1: They seem like harmless little things that like sit on
Speaker 1: a whale and stuff. But there are types of barnacles
Speaker 1: because like the barnacle itself, it's not always just this
Speaker 1: like sort of hard shell that it forms. It is
Speaker 1: like a free swimming, little like sort of worm like thing.
Speaker 1: And so this one, the Seculina carcini, can take over
Speaker 1: a crabs intestines, stomach, and nervous system near its underbelly
Speaker 1: and feed on nutrients from the crab. And what this
Speaker 1: does is, even though it doesn't like only specifically eat
Speaker 1: its gonads, by depriving like siphoning off all these nutrients,
Speaker 1: the gonads fail to fully develop inside of these poor crabs.
Speaker 1: So males will actually grow up to look a bit
Speaker 1: more like females because they don't have the fe male
Speaker 1: hormones that would be produced in their their gonouts, and
Speaker 1: females will actually like they can also be infected. They
Speaker 1: just end up being a little more narrow than other
Speaker 1: females because of the nutrient depletion. But it's really interesting
Speaker 1: when they infect males because it changes their behavior in
Speaker 1: a very strange way.
Speaker 2: So, oh, that's wild.
Speaker 1: Somehow this parasitic barnacle causes the crab to help raise
Speaker 1: the brood of these little parasitic barnacles, grooming them like
Speaker 1: it's their own brood of eggs, which is strange because
Speaker 1: they're a male and they would not naturally ever have eggs,
Speaker 1: so clearly there's some kind of like male like these
Speaker 1: male crabs still have the capacity to have these like
Speaker 1: female crab instincts. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 1: So they'll groom them like they're their own brood sack
Speaker 1: and then release them like like because crabs do this
Speaker 1: thing when they're ready to release eggs where they kind
Speaker 1: of like go up in the waves and kind of
Speaker 1: like bob and shake and shimmy to get the eggs
Speaker 1: off of their abdomen and they kind of like usher
Speaker 1: them on for their own eggs. But they do this
Speaker 1: the males will do this for the parasitic barnacle all same,
Speaker 1: which is it's like very strange, very strange.
Speaker 2: Hormones are fascinating and wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it is an kind of heartwarmingly messed up situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like kind of cute in a way, like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm a mommy, you know, and then they
Speaker 1: can do their thing.
Speaker 2: I'm a zombie mommy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, zombie mommies. Yep. Very very strange, very interesting. But
Speaker 1: I'll probably talk about more cases of parasitic castration on
Speaker 1: another episode, but I think I think we only need
Speaker 1: to do one example of the press that is.
Speaker 3: That that's probably the wildest animal fact I've heard in
Speaker 3: a wild Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so good. Sites are. They're fascinating because when
Speaker 1: they modify their host's behavior in such a strange way.
Speaker 1: It's like with screwflies, like they are a parasite, but
Speaker 1: they they're just gross and bad and they hurt you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, I get it. But when you have
Speaker 1: these very devious parasites, they are like you're the mom now,
Speaker 1: and it's like I'm a mom parasites all right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so strange, so so very strange and interesting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't really need to fear the kangaroo. We don't
Speaker 1: even need to fear these parasitic barnacles until the inevitable
Speaker 1: day that we evolve into crabs.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean I'm looking forward to that day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what, scuttling, I feel like scuttling is
Speaker 1: underrated and I want to do more of it.
Speaker 2: I want to scuttle. I want to scuttle about.
Speaker 1: Suttling is fun? You ever scuttled? Ever got kind of
Speaker 1: good scuttling?
Speaker 3: I skip, which I guess is like the human equivalent
Speaker 3: to a scuttle. I've also rolling down hills, which also
Speaker 3: feels kind of like yeah, yeah, and I scuttle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, when I was actually a kid, I
Speaker 1: learned about this is kind of a tangent, but like
Speaker 1: I learned about how lemurs because they kind of like
Speaker 1: hop side to side. They do this like sash shat
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and it looked really fun, so I
Speaker 1: started doing it, and then I found it's actually a
Speaker 1: really easy way to get around. So, you know, do
Speaker 1: this little lemur sacheting through the house. And my parents
Speaker 1: just thought I was just like dancing around. Was like, no,
Speaker 1: this is actually very efficient method of like emotions.
Speaker 2: I'm walking better than other humans are onto something.
Speaker 1: You guys. Yeah, yeah, so you know, scuttling it's pretty
Speaker 1: good as long as you don't get in fected by
Speaker 1: a barnacle parasite that's gonna gotta make your nads kind
Speaker 1: of not work.
Speaker 2: That's the downside.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit of a downside. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we've busted some some folk tales
Speaker 1: and unbusted some not yet folk tales. But you know
Speaker 1: that probably should be some you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said, like this, you know, I feel
Speaker 2: like you went through a lot of things.
Speaker 3: That I had heard that I should be afraid of.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think we have all correctly aligned ourselves
Speaker 3: to be afraid of, uh those little zombie.
Speaker 1: Craw Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like it's a it's
Speaker 1: I like to reassure and then unassure, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, don't get too comfortable. Now that I've reassured
Speaker 1: you this is okay. Now here's here's here's a little spice,
Speaker 1: here's the alternative that, here's the milk, and now here's
Speaker 1: the spice. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: on today and for patiently listening through some of the
Speaker 1: more horrifying things we talked about. Hey, where can people
Speaker 1: find you on the internet? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if people want to find me, uh, you can
Speaker 3: look me up on Twitter and YouTube.
Speaker 2: Just at my name Maggie may fish m A. That
Speaker 2: is how you spell not the month. Yeah. On its Twitter,
Speaker 2: I'm usually just making jokes.
Speaker 3: And on YouTube I do some fun at film analysis,
Speaker 3: So check it out if that's your thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, do check that out. She's got a very good
Speaker 1: video on cam. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you're into animals, that one might be the one
Speaker 2: to hear you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can find the show on the internet
Speaker 1: at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, at Creature feet Pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter. That's eight not et you very different And
Speaker 1: if you want to send me in your questions, your
Speaker 1: pet pictures, your your crab pictures, Creature Feature Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com is the place to go. And thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And if you're enjoying the show and you have like
Speaker 1: a spare minutes to press some buttons, if you leave
Speaker 1: a rating and review, that actually really really really helps.
Speaker 1: I know I say this every week, but it truly does.
Speaker 1: And every time I read a new review, it makes
Speaker 1: my day so thank you so much. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: And thanks to the space Cossics where there's super awesome song.
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Speaker 2: Bye guys,