Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about some scary urban legends about animals and showing you
Speaker 1: that there's nothing to fear. Well, okay, maybe there is,
Speaker 1: but it's not what you think. From getting swallowed by
Speaker 1: a whale to a small fish going where no fish
Speaker 1: has gone before, we're going to see what you should
Speaker 1: really be scared of. Discover this more as we answer
Speaker 1: to the ansual question, wow, are you telling me that
Speaker 1: Gray's anatomy might have stretched the truth? Joining me today
Speaker 1: is someone who puts the legend in urban legends, video essays,
Speaker 1: and snake lover Maggie may Fish. Hello, Gaty, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you. I I'm actually really excited
Speaker 1: for this episode because I like to be greatly afraid.
Speaker 1: I like to be afraid of things that I don't
Speaker 1: need to be afraid about, but I like being afraid,
Speaker 1: so I like to aim it um at those responsible
Speaker 1: in this case animals, right exactly, Like when I see
Speaker 1: a bear, I'm like, can I see, like how big
Speaker 1: your teeth let me measure your teeth, let me measure
Speaker 1: your close see if I really should be afraid of you? Okay,
Speaker 1: are you still cub or you? Oh? I see that
Speaker 1: you've like bit my arm off. All right, you're right,
Speaker 1: you you from criteria. You ken that I am afraid
Speaker 1: of you? Yes, indeed. Yeah. I mean I think that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of urban legends about animals. Some
Speaker 1: of them are not really the truth, but there is
Speaker 1: something out there that is just as scary. So which
Speaker 1: is always funny to me, because I think it makes
Speaker 1: sense why we have urban legends, because you know, it's
Speaker 1: fun to be scared or rationalizing are 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. Yeah. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen this story yet, but someone in Cape Cod,
Speaker 1: a lobster diver, said he was swallowed by a whale.
Speaker 1: I did see this, and I saw that his fellow
Speaker 1: fisherman backed him up instead. I absolutely believe that he
Speaker 1: was swallowed by a whale. 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. Mad at me precisely. You
Speaker 1: could be the next pet that they put chum. But
Speaker 1: so I don't think he really is lying. I think that,
Speaker 1: but I think he may have misinterpreted what actually happened
Speaker 1: to him, or at least maybe someone who was interviewing
Speaker 1: him put words in his mouth. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I don't think he was actually swallowed by the whale.
Speaker 1: I think he was sort of swished around in a
Speaker 1: whale's mouth like some listing. Yeah, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: the way that he described it. The first image that
Speaker 1: came to mind is like wine tasting, you know, like
Speaker 1: like like the whale was curious and it was like
Speaker 1: this human. You know, depending on where he's from, it
Speaker 1: could be very salty human, it could be very sweet,
Speaker 1: could have some undertoned um. So it seems like he
Speaker 1: was just you know, test tasting. Yeah, this guy was
Speaker 1: like in his fifties. So it's like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is kind of an aged human. It's got a
Speaker 1: nice bouquet, you know, swished it around his mouth and
Speaker 1: spat him out. Yeah, because there's actually no way for
Speaker 1: a humpback whale to actually swallow you whole. That's just
Speaker 1: not really going to happen, at least not an adult
Speaker 1: like that. So humpback whales are not They are carnivores,
Speaker 1: but they're they don't want to eat humans because they
Speaker 1: actually eat little tiny things like krill and small fish.
Speaker 1: So anything the size of a human is not going
Speaker 1: to mean food to them, right. They would see it
Speaker 1: as like a floatation device maybe right right right exactly,
Speaker 1: some some kind of strange curiosity to maybe taste but
Speaker 1: not eat. In fact, they don't really typically want to
Speaker 1: taste you. Even we're kind of just joking about the
Speaker 1: whale Somali a thing. Probably what happened was a mistake.
Speaker 1: So probably was taking in a big gulp of water
Speaker 1: to try to get some krill or get some small
Speaker 1: fish because they have baling. They don't even have teeth
Speaker 1: to bite you, and baling is like that, that's like
Speaker 1: it's got a bunch of brooms in its mouth or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's it's not teeth, it's to filter out. They
Speaker 1: suck in a huge volume of water and then goose
Speaker 1: it out, push it all out, and then trap all
Speaker 1: the fish uh in the in the bailing. So like
Speaker 1: when it's a human, they can't even really bite your teeth,
Speaker 1: So they're not they're not gonna chew you up and
Speaker 1: swallow you. Uh. It's a total mistake. And their throat
Speaker 1: just can't accommodate a human. Like typically the throat is
Speaker 1: only about the size of a human fist like in diameter,
Speaker 1: um it can expell, especially for a huge whale that
Speaker 1: is because it's just for krill and tiny fish. It
Speaker 1: can expand to about the size or diameter of a pizza,
Speaker 1: And that's like the biggest it can really expand. And
Speaker 1: so for a human to fit through that like it
Speaker 1: would be a struggle because if it's about fifteen inches wide,
Speaker 1: like about the size of a pizza, human shoulders are
Speaker 1: about fifteen inches wide if not wider, And so to
Speaker 1: get down the whale throat you have to kind of
Speaker 1: like like put your arms forward like that you'd have
Speaker 1: to treat it right, you have to dive into it
Speaker 1: and like probably lubricate yourself a little bit so that
Speaker 1: you go down coat yourself in butter, and then probably
Speaker 1: the whale is gonna be highly resistant to this because
Speaker 1: it's not used to having something so big in its throat.
Speaker 1: So I feel like the human would have to be
Speaker 1: the one really trying to get down there for whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm already in the mouth, but the stomach, this is
Speaker 1: not gonna be a story. Yeah, but yeah, So in fact,
Speaker 1: there's really only one whale in the world who could
Speaker 1: without chewing, just easily swallow a human whole, and that
Speaker 1: would be a sperm whale who can and have swallowed
Speaker 1: giant squid and they've found like a cold giant squid
Speaker 1: in their stomachs. But you're probably never ever going to
Speaker 1: be swallowed by a sperm whale simply because they don't
Speaker 1: live where humans can easily survive. So I didn't even
Speaker 1: think about that. It's a huge yeah. Yeah, Not only
Speaker 1: are they probably not going to pursue humans as prey
Speaker 1: because they just wouldn't really recognize the human as normal
Speaker 1: prey that they would encounter, but they also live the
Speaker 1: reason you've like when you go whale watching, you typically
Speaker 1: don't see a sperm whale. Is they live at around
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet or a little over three thousand meters
Speaker 1: under the sea, so encounters with yes, we Actually it's
Speaker 1: a problem for biologists because we don't know that much
Speaker 1: about sperm whales, given they live so deep in the ocean,
Speaker 1: and it's not very easy to observe their behaviors, like
Speaker 1: I don't even think we've we know exactly like how
Speaker 1: they're mating, goes and all these things. There. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of mysteries about sperm whales and another deep
Speaker 1: sea living whales, and they do come up to 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 ocean.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, sinking into their I mean the lungs and
Speaker 1: internal organs would turn into a kind of jello salad
Speaker 1: at that point. So the furthest a human can die
Speaker 1: without getting their lungs crushed is about sixty feet or
Speaker 1: eighteen meters, compared to three thousand meters or ten thousand feet,
Speaker 1: so you'd be very you you'd already be pretty dead
Speaker 1: at that point, you'd be extremely dead. You'd be big dead.
Speaker 1: You'd be big dead, big dead hashtag big dead. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the only time you would really encounter
Speaker 1: a sperm whale is one of the rare times they
Speaker 1: come up to you know, because they are mammals, they
Speaker 1: do need to breathe, But I don't think that they
Speaker 1: would particularly be in a hunting mood at that at
Speaker 1: that time. You know, they're they're like coming up to
Speaker 1: to take a breath and then they'll dive back down.
Speaker 1: They don't like hang around and like, ah, who's this
Speaker 1: is this lobster dive rault? Try this out? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: 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 Geppetto got swallowed by monster or whatever that
Speaker 1: whale was. Like, again, he would already be super dead
Speaker 1: and jellyfied at those depths, right Pinocchio, though, he's like
Speaker 1: made out of wood, so he could potentially go down
Speaker 1: 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 by
Speaker 1: the weight of the ocean. So you're saying in the
Speaker 1: film Pinocchio and geppetto actually die within the whale and
Speaker 1: everything after that is yeah, just a fever dream of
Speaker 1: a puppet wooden boy. Yeah. Yeah. Also, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think a whale stomach is a big empty, air filled
Speaker 1: cavern with fire there, with a little fire. And the
Speaker 1: problem with that is actually, oh, whale, deep diving whales,
Speaker 1: like sperm whales, will push out all air that isn't
Speaker 1: like all the air in 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 bends, which is a result of
Speaker 1: like the the dissolving of air into the blood dream.
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's bad, bad for yourselves, bad for
Speaker 1: your tissues. And then it's also their uh, 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 there, rungs
Speaker 1: can collapse and then push out all the air so
Speaker 1: that but by that time their blood is already super
Speaker 1: enriched with oxygen, and their lungs are also their rib
Speaker 1: cages and lungs are sort of designed to collapse and expand,
Speaker 1: so they can withstand that, whereas we we can't our
Speaker 1: frail bodies. Now it just becomes sort of I mean,
Speaker 1: like the 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 horshow. Yeah. So actually, so do you know why
Speaker 1: sperm whales are called sperm whales? I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: I've been told, but I don't know what the truth is.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, well, I'm gonna admit that I just learned this,
Speaker 1: so don't feel don't feel bad about it. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking, like, there's got to be like an innocuate
Speaker 1: because like it's like a little sperm whales, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it, Okay. I think maybe they have something
Speaker 1: to do with the things like their blubber resembles sperm
Speaker 1: very close. You're very very close. Yeah, yeah, they are. Actually,
Speaker 1: they used to be called sperma chetti whales because inside
Speaker 1: the whales head cavity because like their heads are very fatty,
Speaker 1: they have uh, it's not just skull and like they
Speaker 1: have a lot of sort of area around their skull.
Speaker 1: They have an waxy, oily white substance called sperma chetti
Speaker 1: and it's called sperma chetti because people thought this was
Speaker 1: the whale semenow it's not, it is not um. It
Speaker 1: is in fact a sort of waxy, oily substance that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with reproduction. But because they were
Speaker 1: dirty sailor as they called them, spermatchety whales, and they
Speaker 1: made candles and stuff out of this, so it was
Speaker 1: it's so crazy because they they're like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is probably the whale sperm, let's make some candles out
Speaker 1: of it. Candles family. But it is actually probably used
Speaker 1: by the whale as a resonance chamber in in their
Speaker 1: head to aid in echolocation, or it could also in
Speaker 1: addition help with buoyancy, so regulating buoyancy because again, like
Speaker 1: a lot of animals, not just whales, but fish as
Speaker 1: well that are deep sea divers, they don't want any
Speaker 1: like gases inside their bodies because that is a problem
Speaker 1: when you're under those pressures and then you you know
Speaker 1: so so burst out your head. Yeah, they get they
Speaker 1: get too well, they get too compressed, and then you
Speaker 1: can get the bins and so it just doesn't really work.
Speaker 1: So so fish often instead of a swim bladder full
Speaker 1: of a gas like like fish that are more near
Speaker 1: the service might have, they have like oily substances in it.
Speaker 1: So similarly, these sperm whales there, if they need to
Speaker 1: regulate their buoyancy, they don't want to have any like
Speaker 1: air filled chambers. They want to have an oily substance,
Speaker 1: a liquid that because liquid can't get that compressed, but
Speaker 1: air and gases can become compressed, and that's a big
Speaker 1: problem underwater. Hence sperm in the head. Hence sperm in
Speaker 1: the head exactly from the head. So basically, don't need
Speaker 1: to worry about being swallowed by a whale. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. And this guy again, he was probably swished
Speaker 1: around in the whale's mouth, not really swallowed, you know,
Speaker 1: the whale actually at the end of the day, all right, right,
Speaker 1: the guy was The guy was a good sport about
Speaker 1: it too. He's like, I just like to apologize to
Speaker 1: the whale for like having to taste me. So yeah,
Speaker 1: 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 snake.
Speaker 1: I know you do. You have a little python of
Speaker 1: your own, not articulated python. But he's a ball python,
Speaker 1: right yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's not gonna he's not
Speaker 1: gonna swallow you whole anytime soon. But the articulated python,
Speaker 1: while this is very rare, they can swallow a person hole.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they have so giant reticulated pythons in
Speaker 1: Indonesia have been known to once in a while swallow
Speaker 1: a person and kill them. These pythons can grow up
Speaker 1: to twenty feet or six meters long and way up
Speaker 1: to a hundred and sixty five pounds or seventy fives
Speaker 1: and their jaws can expand as far as its skin
Speaker 1: can stretch. So they don't have the same hinge joint
Speaker 1: that human jaws have. Uh, they don't. And I think
Speaker 1: it's often said that their jaws like dislocate. That's not
Speaker 1: really true because they're never located in the person. They've
Speaker 1: been right, right, They just aren't. They aren't connected like
Speaker 1: a human jaw. So so they can expand their jaws
Speaker 1: much as their mouth skin can stretch, and they can
Speaker 1: swallow enormous prey such as pigs and even small cows sometimes. Yeah, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this means they can also swallow a human. In eighteen,
Speaker 1: a fifty four year old woman was killed and swallowed
Speaker 1: whole by a reticulated python, and there have been other
Speaker 1: cases of farmers and kids potentially getting swallowed whole by
Speaker 1: these pythons. It is very rare. So again, even if
Speaker 1: you live in an area where there are reticulated pythons,
Speaker 1: your chances of being killed by one are very low,
Speaker 1: but when it does happen, it is very horrifying. So
Speaker 1: you might wonder, like, well, how can you know, how
Speaker 1: could they just swallow a person? Like how could they
Speaker 1: because you know, you would imagine like you'd run away, right,
Speaker 1: you know if if a python is just like try 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 the prey. Yeah, they kill their prey by
Speaker 1: suffocating their victims. So they sneak up on you, um,
Speaker 1: and then they strike at their prey and bite down,
Speaker 1: not to inject venom because they don't actually have venom,
Speaker 1: but just to hold you in place while they very
Speaker 1: like surprisingly quickly can wrap their coils around you. And
Speaker 1: then once you're in those coils, you're kind of doomed
Speaker 1: unless you're you have a machete and you have the
Speaker 1: strength to like fight it off where there are people
Speaker 1: around who can help extract you. If you're on your
Speaker 1: own and you don't have any means to defend yourself,
Speaker 1: you're kind of doomed because once those once it gives
Speaker 1: you that hug of death it will literally crush you
Speaker 1: until you can't breathe and then you will asphyxiate, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very scary. It's a little less scary than like
Speaker 1: being swallowed alive, I think. Yeah, I'm gonna say it
Speaker 1: kindly puts you out of your misery. Very sweet of it,
Speaker 1: very kind of kindness, has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't want you to choke it like to
Speaker 1: wiggle and fight while it's still inside of you, because
Speaker 1: that can kill. That can kill a reiculated python. You know,
Speaker 1: from the python's point of view, what what a masterful
Speaker 1: way to eat you? Just you kill it, You crush
Speaker 1: until it's just a tiny little tube of Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you can suck it down like a yogurtgurt. Well, to
Speaker 1: be fair, they don't. When they crush their their victims,
Speaker 1: often the body is actually pretty intact. In fact, this
Speaker 1: is a little bit horrible. But when they cut open
Speaker 1: a python, they can find bodies completely intact if they
Speaker 1: haven't started digesting them. And this includes unfortunately human victims
Speaker 1: who they find their bodies intact, but they are sadly
Speaker 1: already passed away because they have been asphyxiated. So they
Speaker 1: actually really swallow their prey head first because that's just easier,
Speaker 1: easier to go in. When I feed my snake, yeah,
Speaker 1: always eats the head first, and yeah, you see it
Speaker 1: like makes it makes sense. You know. The body, well,
Speaker 1: it's like the arms, you know, it's it's just kind
Speaker 1: of smoothes down pretty easy, and they have very strong
Speaker 1: muscle contractions to get it down into their very expandable bellies.
Speaker 1: Like you see one of these pythons, and when it
Speaker 1: has a big meal, doesn't have to be a human.
Speaker 1: It can be like a pig or or a deer
Speaker 1: or something like. It's just there's this huge bulge in
Speaker 1: its stomach and then it can like not eat for
Speaker 1: like many many months like it like if it has
Speaker 1: a big I think it can even like hold off
Speaker 1: for like over a year like once it has a
Speaker 1: big deal like that. So, unfortunately, both for the human
Speaker 1: and for the snake, if it does eat a human,
Speaker 1: this is ideal for the reticulated python. Obviously it's not
Speaker 1: an ideal for the human either, but clothes cannot be digested,
Speaker 1: so it will actually kill the reticulated python if like
Speaker 1: often it is actually killed by by humans because like
Speaker 1: they're looking for a missing person, they find a python
Speaker 1: with a suspicious bulge, and then they kill the python.
Speaker 1: And when they do that, they're actually probably sparing the
Speaker 1: python a lot of misery because they are not going
Speaker 1: to be able to digest all of that, all of
Speaker 1: those clothes, and they'll give a stomach impaction. Uh. They
Speaker 1: can digest bone, though it's not necessarily that they can
Speaker 1: like digest bone completely, but they like they can, like
Speaker 1: they goose it out, like they they push out sort of,
Speaker 1: they'll like regurgitate sort of the skeletal remains. It's to graphic,
Speaker 1: but yeah, when my uh little python goes to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: there's like he's regular, but then there's like a little
Speaker 1: ball of white which is like like fur and bone
Speaker 1: kind of just yeah conjeweled together, right exactly. I think
Speaker 1: they can actually poop it all out. I think they
Speaker 1: only regurgitate things if it's like too big or something.
Speaker 1: There's actually been problems with pet pythons when they eat
Speaker 1: like accidentally, like I think a towel is food and
Speaker 1: then they eat it and then they have to be
Speaker 1: taken to the vet for the towel to be pulled out. Video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: poor baby. Of course, we feel so sorry for for
Speaker 1: the python that aid to human I mean I I
Speaker 1: 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 relevant it's so newsworthy because in the
Speaker 1: last decade, I think only like a hand like you know,
Speaker 1: you could count on one hand the number of people
Speaker 1: who have been swallowed by a python U. So it's
Speaker 1: it's really not something that you have to worry about
Speaker 1: too much. But you know, if a python like starts
Speaker 1: to like wrap around you, you gotta take that seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guess you know, at that moment, yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: start thinking. But it's but when it happens to human
Speaker 1: it's actually it's like you may think, like, well, why
Speaker 1: don't they like try to get away, It actually does
Speaker 1: happen surprisingly fast. So once they like bite down on you,
Speaker 1: especially if you're like if you're older or smaller, like,
Speaker 1: as soon as they buy down on you and they
Speaker 1: can get around you really quickly, and it can be
Speaker 1: really difficult to get away. So it's a really, really
Speaker 1: terrible situation. So next time you you feed your cute
Speaker 1: little snake, remember that. Yeah, but you know, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want people to be to hate snakes. They're
Speaker 1: they're really cool, really cool animals. This only happens very occasionally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's more like they you know, they don't know,
Speaker 1: but they're you know, yeah, they don't understand, they don't
Speaker 1: you know. They they just snake. They're just little noodles
Speaker 1: who like to eat, you know what I mean. They
Speaker 1: don't know that they're eating someone's grandma. So we talked
Speaker 1: about snakes, and they were going to talk about spiders,
Speaker 1: two of the people's most favorite animals. Yeah, spiders are
Speaker 1: often really maligned. There are a lot of stories about spiders,
Speaker 1: how scary they are. Typically though they're really not out
Speaker 1: to get you, right, They eat mosquitoes, which I have
Speaker 1: always seen as uh, you know, yes, we're typically the
Speaker 1: ones that are actually out to get spiders. There's this
Speaker 1: recent story in Perth, Australia. Police were called by a
Speaker 1: neighbor of someone who heard a man yelling why won't
Speaker 1: you die and the sounds of a crying toddler. So
Speaker 1: police rushed to the house and it turned out the
Speaker 1: man was just trying to kill a large spider. That
Speaker 1: is really funny. He apologized to police. He said he
Speaker 1: had a rachnophobia and was panicking, and of course the
Speaker 1: toddler was crying because daddy was scared and there was
Speaker 1: a giant spider. A giant spider. Yeah, yeah, so I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's somewhat relatable thing. I don't like to
Speaker 1: kill spiders, but when they are really large, like alarmingly large,
Speaker 1: and I know they're gonna startle me, I tried to
Speaker 1: at least get them out of the house because they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, I don't like to be startled
Speaker 1: by a spider. I don't like to sort of look
Speaker 1: down and there's like one on my arm that freaks
Speaker 1: me out. Right. If you, yeah, there's one big enough
Speaker 1: in the house that I notice it, I would like
Speaker 1: it out of the house, presumably. Yeah, if it's smaller
Speaker 1: than a quarter you can hang out, buddy, It's fine,
Speaker 1: you know what, Let's just chill. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: be found at that point. But there is a myth
Speaker 1: about spiders actually a couple of months. One is that
Speaker 1: like you eat spiders in your sleep, which it's just
Speaker 1: not going to happen. Spiders don't want to be eaten
Speaker 1: by you. They don't want to get in there. No,
Speaker 1: So that's that's that, there's really not truth to that.
Speaker 1: The other one is that spiders will lay eggs in
Speaker 1: your ears or your brain. A very popular scary stories
Speaker 1: to tell him the dark story. Yeah, yeah, like a
Speaker 1: spider lays eggs in someone's skin or something. Is that
Speaker 1: the one YEA thinks it and then it's just spiders. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so spiders for actunately, all the spiders out there, they
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: inside you. That's the last thing they want. Very rarely
Speaker 1: a spider might crawl in your ear. That is not
Speaker 1: because they want to lay eggs. They're not gonna lay
Speaker 1: eggs in your brain. They're not gonna like drill a
Speaker 1: hole into your skull. They just think your ear is
Speaker 1: like a little cozy spot. Uh. They mistake it for
Speaker 1: like a little nook or cranny. They don't realize you're alive.
Speaker 1: If they did, they would freak out. It'd be like
Speaker 1: it'd be like if you were seeking refuge in a
Speaker 1: cave and then you realize the cave is like the
Speaker 1: ear of a gargantuan monster, you would freak out, you'd
Speaker 1: be scared. This doesn't happen very often, but when a
Speaker 1: spider crawls into someone's ear, it's a complete mistake. They're
Speaker 1: 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: s bob, because that can either damage your ear or
Speaker 1: you can like scare the the insect in it will
Speaker 1: actually crawl deeper, not because it's trying to like get
Speaker 1: into your brain because you're scaring it, because you're like right,
Speaker 1: like if you're again, imagine you know, go take a
Speaker 1: trip down to imagination station. Imagine you're in a cave.
Speaker 1: It's it's like it's kind of cold outside and you
Speaker 1: find this cozy little cave go inside, and it's nice
Speaker 1: and warm. In fact, it's like weirdly warm. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is nice and cozy, and then suddenly you like
Speaker 1: hear this low rumbling and then this giant appendage come
Speaker 1: in to try to like grab You're gonna like run
Speaker 1: deeper into the cave and then like the giant monster
Speaker 1: and says, going to freak out even more. So what
Speaker 1: you should do is just go to a doctor. What
Speaker 1: you should do. Yeah, So so if you if you
Speaker 1: think there's like a bug in your ear or something,
Speaker 1: go to a doctor and they will be able to
Speaker 1: remove it without like shoving anything probably in your ear.
Speaker 1: Usually I think what doctors do is or they might
Speaker 1: put something in your ear, but they're a doctor and
Speaker 1: they're allowed to do that. So usually what they will
Speaker 1: do is they'll actually flush it out with some sailing
Speaker 1: and and the little spider or or whatever insect will
Speaker 1: just come out surfing on a wave of sailing because
Speaker 1: that way, that way just like kind of flushes it out,
Speaker 1: and then it will also like want to get out,
Speaker 1: like it'll swim to the surface of the sailing if
Speaker 1: there's water in there. And it's just a much less
Speaker 1: traumatic way to get a bug out of your ear
Speaker 1: than to go after it with tweezers. But also this
Speaker 1: is probably never going to happen to you. It's extremely rare.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why it's snoozeworthy. Like it's very
Speaker 1: very bugs in your ear, So you don't need to
Speaker 1: be afraid of spiders. They don't they don't lay eggs
Speaker 1: under your skin. They don't lay eggs in your ears.
Speaker 1: But before you breathe a sigh of relief, okaty, there
Speaker 1: are insects that I'll do this and one of the
Speaker 1: one of the creepiest ones in my opinion, are screw worms.
Speaker 1: So you know this is the part where I warn
Speaker 1: you this section is gonna get a little gross. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to skip ahead, like if
Speaker 1: you have tripophobia or fear of like insects, like parasites
Speaker 1: human you know, kind of parasites, you can join back
Speaker 1: in at part three. At we're actually in part three,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a fish that allegedly swims
Speaker 1: up people's your wreathros So if that also sounds to gross,
Speaker 1: maybe the rest of this episode isn't for you, and
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week. But if you want to
Speaker 1: skip the screw worm section and you want to come
Speaker 1: back just for the penis fish one, um, you know,
Speaker 1: join us back in at this time stamp take it away,
Speaker 1: future Katie. All right, so for those of you, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks toture Katie, and now back to pass Katie. So
Speaker 1: now we're gonna talk about screw worms and how horrifying
Speaker 1: they really are. So these are New World screw worm flies,
Speaker 1: which are found throughout the humid areas of the America's
Speaker 1: So the adult version looks benign, just like a standard fly.
Speaker 1: I in the show notes, I've included a picture of
Speaker 1: the the adult in the larva, and absolutely no other
Speaker 1: pictures of what happens with screw Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Thank you for If you're curious what they look like
Speaker 1: but you don't want to see like body horror stuff,
Speaker 1: you can look at the dock link below and there's
Speaker 1: no body horror stuff, just the fly and just the maggot.
Speaker 1: If you're curious to see what they look like, I
Speaker 1: recommend against googling. If you are grossed out by you know,
Speaker 1: medical pictures and body horror stuff, you don't want to
Speaker 1: see that. Again, the adult looks pretty innocuous, just like
Speaker 1: it's both look very Yeah normal, you got a normal larva. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they're called screw worms. Because the you can see
Speaker 1: the larva is kind of like segmented, so it's like
Speaker 1: kind of I guess screw like in a way. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like tapered and it's got like it looks
Speaker 1: maybe like it has screw threads or something, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not that alarming looking really, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: And I saw that going around, I'd be like checks out.
Speaker 1: That's you know, not start to worry about it getting
Speaker 1: inside your body, but you probably should. So. Female screw
Speaker 1: flies 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 uh and on multiple
Speaker 1: asians they have gotten inside human skin. Usually like if
Speaker 1: you have a a open wound or something. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: the The flies don't like bite you and put it
Speaker 1: inside you, but they um look for an opening like
Speaker 1: a literal opening, for a literal opening. But this could
Speaker 1: even be something like in newborn animals. Often like they
Speaker 1: infect livestock and so a newborn calf or something, they
Speaker 1: go for the the belly button because they're attracted to
Speaker 1: the smell of blood, yes exactly, and so like for
Speaker 1: they don't they won't typically go for like an adult's
Speaker 1: belly button because that's healed over. But for a newborn calf,
Speaker 1: it's like it still smells kind of bloody. They go
Speaker 1: in there and it's it's gross. You don't want to
Speaker 1: see it. This condition of a larva living inside human
Speaker 1: tissue is known medically as miasis, and it is gross
Speaker 1: and bad and you don't want it to happen to
Speaker 1: bad And my official medical opinion, it's gross and bad.
Speaker 1: Agree in my official non medical opinion, it's gross and bad. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: the way that screw worms differ from most maggots is
Speaker 1: that screw worms actually feed on live tissue, not just
Speaker 1: dead necrotic tissue. So I was gonna say, because like
Speaker 1: you know, growing up in Michigan, every once in a while, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd see like a road kill or something and then
Speaker 1: end speaking profectperience your kid, you go over look at
Speaker 1: the road kill. Yeah it's like covered in maggot stick
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, yeah, I'm learning I'm learning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maggot infested wounds, while disgusting, is not necessarily a
Speaker 1: horrible problem. In fact, maggots can actually help with wound
Speaker 1: healing sometimes, not that I recommend letting your wound get
Speaker 1: to the point where it's maggots without the dead flesh,
Speaker 1: but they just eat the dead flesh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there are like medical grade maggots that are like sterile
Speaker 1: that on occasion, very rarely that it's not the typical
Speaker 1: use of them. But if you have some necrotic tissue
Speaker 1: problems where it's hard to hard to it's called debriding
Speaker 1: the necrotic tissue. So it's like when there's dead tissue
Speaker 1: and uh, you want to like get rid of the
Speaker 1: dead tissue so it doesn't become infected. And so they
Speaker 1: can actually use medical maggots to to get rid of
Speaker 1: that dead tissue. So so, uh, maggots in general, while disgusting,
Speaker 1: are not really that dangerous actually, but screw worms will
Speaker 1: eat healthy tissue and that's very very bad. So, uh,
Speaker 1: screw worms will inside their host, which is typically not humans.
Speaker 1: Humans are not their primary target. It's usually other mammals.
Speaker 1: It can even be smaller mammals if the if it's
Speaker 1: a small enough mammal like like something like a rodent
Speaker 1: or like a baby livestock or something, they can even
Speaker 1: feed on the live tissue of their host until their
Speaker 1: host dies. And very rarely humans can die of screw
Speaker 1: worm infections. Usually that's it's because of not because they've
Speaker 1: like eaten away at too much tissue, but it's because
Speaker 1: of getting an infection and and the result from that.
Speaker 1: Um before you panic, uh, the US eradicated screw worms
Speaker 1: in two so so screw rooms are endemic to the
Speaker 1: America's so uh mostly like like in sort of the
Speaker 1: southern areas of the US and in South America again
Speaker 1: so SO two. The US eradicated screw worms. They actually
Speaker 1: use something called the sterile insect technique where sterile males,
Speaker 1: so males that can't reproduce, are released to flood the
Speaker 1: dating pool and they steal mates from fertile males. So
Speaker 1: it's basically like you release all these infertile males and
Speaker 1: then they compete with fertile males, and so some of
Speaker 1: these uh females will mate with the sterile males and
Speaker 1: then blow their chance to have offspring and then the
Speaker 1: next generation there's less of them, and then you repeat
Speaker 1: this over and over again until you can like basically
Speaker 1: decimate a population. There was actually an outbreak of screwworms
Speaker 1: in Florida in so just because we got rid of
Speaker 1: them for the most part doesn't mean that they don't
Speaker 1: sometimes come back. I think that, uh, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good, uh good job for eradicating Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know, I don't know enough about the uh
Speaker 1: sort of you know, food pyramid of screw worms to
Speaker 1: know like what effect that would have or had on
Speaker 1: the environment. Um, So it's like it's kind these things
Speaker 1: are it's like you balance like the human need of
Speaker 1: of these over the nature creating worms that can you know,
Speaker 1: burrow into sea. And it was like a big problem
Speaker 1: with livestock to not just like humans, so big big
Speaker 1: problem with like our our food chain. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's it's sort of like I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: I don't think that these insects should go extinct, because
Speaker 1: I think that would represent a big problem. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I don't think they ever will. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like with It's kind of like with
Speaker 1: mosquitoes when we control mosquito populations. It's like, well, mosquitoes
Speaker 1: are actually very important for of to sustain a lot
Speaker 1: of species that eat them as food. But I also
Speaker 1: don't think we're ever gonna they're never gonna go extinct.
Speaker 1: But but it's important to be careful because this like
Speaker 1: sterile insect technique is very powerful, right, we definitely don't
Speaker 1: want to overhear yeah, or do only use it on
Speaker 1: a species that you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so Guatemala, Belize and El Savador also araunddicated their
Speaker 1: screw worm population. Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Jamaica
Speaker 1: are still fighting to eliminate their populations. So it's not
Speaker 1: as much of a problem as it used to be
Speaker 1: in the past, but that doesn't mean there's zero chance
Speaker 1: of having an issue with them. There's actually what's really interesting,
Speaker 1: and there was a nineteen seventies seven short story called
Speaker 1: The screw Fly Solution by Alice Sheldon. It was a
Speaker 1: sci fi short story that described a horrific epidemic of
Speaker 1: men murdering women and men starting these cults that were
Speaker 1: like these religious cults saying like women are evil and
Speaker 1: would morder them for uh these religious reasons, whereas other
Speaker 1: men just like would do it randomly, and some men
Speaker 1: who were like good people like isolated themselves to try
Speaker 1: to prevent themselves from murdering women. But eventually, like only
Speaker 1: a few women are left uh uh surviving on earth.
Speaker 1: Those major spoilers for the short story if you want
Speaker 1: to just read it instead of listening to me describe it.
Speaker 1: One of the women discovers that the cause of this
Speaker 1: murder epidemic is that an alien species is using a
Speaker 1: version of the sterile insect technique on humans. So an
Speaker 1: alien species is causing men's sex strives to turn into
Speaker 1: murderous impulses because the aliens want to eradicate humans so
Speaker 1: they can live on earth instead. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not against it. God, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how many eyes do you have, Maggie? Uh? Or normal?
Speaker 1: It's It was also used in another inspiration for another story,
Speaker 1: and Carmen Mola's eighteen detective novel not No Via Jitana
Speaker 1: describes the screw worm being used as a very slow
Speaker 1: murder weapon by the murderer inserting eggs into a victim's body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a fun like you know it's a fun villain, yeah,
Speaker 1: fun harder 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 lighthearted stories,
Speaker 1: you know, light romp about aliens killing off humans and
Speaker 1: and you know, flesh eating larva being used as a
Speaker 1: murder weapon. Real fun stuff. Yeah, checks out, It all
Speaker 1: checks out. Well, when we get back, we're actually going
Speaker 1: to talk about something a little less gruesome, simply a
Speaker 1: fish that supposedly swims up your urethra that that kiddy stuff, yeah,
Speaker 1: and eats penises. It's totally fine. Just you know what,
Speaker 1: so this is Yeah, I'm not worried at all. So, Maggie,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have heard of the
Speaker 1: Candoru penis fish. Uh. It is a fish that allegedly
Speaker 1: will swim up your peace stream and go inside of
Speaker 1: your pea hole. I think it's typically the ideas that
Speaker 1: it goes inside a penis. So if you have a
Speaker 1: penis and you go to a river in the Amazon
Speaker 1: where these fish live, allegedly, the story goes you pee,
Speaker 1: You've got a nice I guess a nice strong stream
Speaker 1: of urine. Yeah, it's gonna say it's warm, so itsumably
Speaker 1: that's part of it, but you can you must. It's
Speaker 1: got to be like a steady stream, I guess, can't
Speaker 1: be like drunk peeing right where you just spreading every Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then this little fish, apparently according to legend, will
Speaker 1: swim up this peace stream, go right inside your pea
Speaker 1: hole maybe you don't even notice it, I guess, and
Speaker 1: then grow inside there and either eat your pianist or
Speaker 1: just hang out in there. That part's unclear. This was
Speaker 1: made popular by an episode of Gray's Anatomy noted very
Speaker 1: accurate medical show. Very accurate? Is I actually only watched
Speaker 1: that show to diagnose Yeah, not even friends yet. I'm
Speaker 1: basically like a doctor now, and I think you have
Speaker 1: a rare case of necrotizing fasciitis, like I have a headache. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you should go to the hospital. Also, there's
Speaker 1: any hot doctors hanging out? Yeah, it is kind of.
Speaker 1: It does give you the sense that like every doctor
Speaker 1: is going to be super super hot, where it's like
Speaker 1: not to say doctors aren't hot. Most doctors are just
Speaker 1: your regular you know, like all right, well let's take
Speaker 1: a look inside of you, you know, and now hand
Speaker 1: me the four steps. Wow, it's getting hot in here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to unbutton my lab coat, like take
Speaker 1: out the fish that's in your pan. So a little background.
Speaker 1: A man comes in with like he's unable to urinate.
Speaker 1: He's got some swelling and some pain and the whole,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of penis area. And the doctors are
Speaker 1: scratching their heads, like what's going on? And so they
Speaker 1: had they could they ruled out some other common urinary problems,
Speaker 1: and so they took an X ray and they're trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of this X ray and uh, here
Speaker 1: here it is. Here is there, very realistic doctor discussion.
Speaker 1: The penis fish. Sorry you find it back a little longer.
Speaker 1: Amazing penis fish. All right, I'm gonna wind it back
Speaker 1: just a little further. Mm. Looks like some kind of
Speaker 1: foreign check that almost looks like a skeleton. It's skeleton like,
Speaker 1: definitely skeleton bobs. Can't be it could be. It looks
Speaker 1: like a teeny tiny cash fish. Close. See there those
Speaker 1: are spines. This is a candaroo fish. The penis fish.
Speaker 1: This guy has the penis fish in his his The
Speaker 1: penist fish. This guy has the penis fish. It is
Speaker 1: penis like the penis. He's got the penis fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well record scratch. I bet you're wondering how I got here.
Speaker 1: That's me. She's zooming on the extra of the fish.
Speaker 1: It's like, you see that, that's me. I'm the kangaroo.
Speaker 1: I wonder how I got here? Well it all started
Speaker 1: when Yeah, so it's this is this real? Uh? It's
Speaker 1: this is a real fish. What's going on? What are
Speaker 1: these fake doctors talking about? Well, so the candaroo is
Speaker 1: a very real fish, but the rumors of its affinity
Speaker 1: for the human penis maybe slightly overstated or maybe greatly overstated.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a puzzle. So the candaroo is
Speaker 1: a small then catfish found in freshwater rivers of the Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's also called a toothpick fish because they're so slender.
Speaker 1: So they can grow up as adults to be up
Speaker 1: to seven inches or two point five centimeters long, but
Speaker 1: younger ones can be very small and thin, so maybe
Speaker 1: just a bit thicker than a toothpick. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that while they're little, they could like get up
Speaker 1: inside of your urethra if you're constantly yeah, if you well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. Okay, So what do we absolutely
Speaker 1: know about candaroos. They are blood suckers. They will enter
Speaker 1: the gill cavities of fish and suck on the fish
Speaker 1: is blood. So to anchor themselves, they will actually erect
Speaker 1: spines that they have on their own gills to stick
Speaker 1: inside the gills of their victims so they can go
Speaker 1: in there and suck on blood. And it's actually kind
Speaker 1: of weird because they can sort of like a leech
Speaker 1: like it becomes sort of engorged with bloods start off
Speaker 1: really thin and then they get like this full belly
Speaker 1: of blood. It's it's pretty weird, but you know, onto
Speaker 1: the 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. Um.
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 p hole. Now, the problem with this
Speaker 1: legend is that there's no evidence that kangaroos are attracted
Speaker 1: at all to urine. And they seem to hunt by sight,
Speaker 1: not by smell, so that doesn't really check out. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five, another biologist was regaled with tales of
Speaker 1: a fish that would swim up peastree um. But the
Speaker 1: explanation of the fish being able to traverse the stream
Speaker 1: of urine actually defies the laws of physics. That's not possible.
Speaker 1: That's not possible. It would need a type of propulsion.
Speaker 1: The fluid dynamics of it don't make sense. Yeah, that no,
Speaker 1: none of the It's this idea that like a salmon
Speaker 1: could you know, like like salmon's would like jump up
Speaker 1: a waterfall, but somehow you could do that like in
Speaker 1: a stream of p and it would just like swim up.
Speaker 1: It actually impossible from a fluid dynamic and fish physics perspective.
Speaker 1: It's thought that maybe this aspect of the legend comes
Speaker 1: from fish gathering at the site where the pea enters
Speaker 1: the water, because like if you're peeing in the water,
Speaker 1: it creates this little disturbance on the surface of the
Speaker 1: water and fish may swim swim up to it, not
Speaker 1: because they like the smell of pea like their little freaks,
Speaker 1: or that they to swim up your peace stream magically
Speaker 1: using their magic fluid dynamics stuff. It's actually just because
Speaker 1: any kind of small disturbance on the surface of the
Speaker 1: water 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 of
Speaker 1: your urethra? I don't think it could do it by
Speaker 1: traveling up a peace string if you're like in the water,
Speaker 1: could it potentially get inside like a peniss p hole. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But it's not certain whether we really have any documented
Speaker 1: evidence of this. We're going to talk about the only
Speaker 1: case 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 to age Nina,
Speaker 1: you're actually much more likely to have to tingle with
Speaker 1: the Canada. Uh. It's not that it's gonna go up
Speaker 1: your urethra, because you know, female anatomy, the vagina is
Speaker 1: not the eure throat. Urethra is separated from the vagina.
Speaker 1: The entrance of the vagina just goes up into the
Speaker 1: vaginal cavity, and then there's the cervix that box that
Speaker 1: from the uterus. So there are a few documented cases
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds of the candaroo entering the vagina.
Speaker 1: But uh, it was easily extracted, didn't really harm the
Speaker 1: person at all. And that's a bit easier to accomplish
Speaker 1: than going up a narrow urethra. Uh a little more room,
Speaker 1: right exactly. Uh. And again this was probably a mistake.
Speaker 1: The candaroo was thinking that it was going in the
Speaker 1: gills of a fish that it normally prays on, but
Speaker 1: it's it's, you know, a vagina. Oops, yeah it So
Speaker 1: in seven the only documented case of a candaroo entering
Speaker 1: a penis occurred in Brazil. The twenty three year old
Speaker 1: man claimed that candaroo jumped from the river into his
Speaker 1: penis as he was urinating. This incident is contentious for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons, which were thoroughly examined by American
Speaker 1: marine biologists Steven Spotty, who investigated and wrote a book
Speaker 1: in two thousand two called Kandaroo Life and Legend of
Speaker 1: the blood Sucking Catfishes. So he looked at this story
Speaker 1: and examined some of the problems with how the incident
Speaker 1: was presented. He didn't say like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: total lie or anything. He just said, these things, these
Speaker 1: aspects of the story don't quite make sense. So either
Speaker 1: there's some mistakes in like how this this uh um
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 to be humanist, to air describing
Speaker 1: what to h yes, to be humanists to air on
Speaker 1: what went up your penis hull uh So the victim
Speaker 1: claimed that the candaroo leapt out of the water via
Speaker 1: his peace stream into his urethra. So this is the
Speaker 1: typical story in the folk tale. But again, like we
Speaker 1: described earlier, this version has been thoroughly disproved just by
Speaker 1: p physics. It can't really happen. Um. More likely way
Speaker 1: of this happening would be if you are waist deep
Speaker 1: in your your penis is actually in the water, then
Speaker 1: perhaps like it could go up inside um. It would
Speaker 1: have to be very small a juvenile, but you know, maybe,
Speaker 1: but this isn't what he described, so either he was
Speaker 1: just mistakenly thought that's when it went up, Like maybe
Speaker 1: it got in earlier and he didn't realize it got
Speaker 1: in when he was like submerged, and he just assumed
Speaker 1: this is how it happened, or he was like not
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Let's give him the benefit of the
Speaker 1: doubt and just say, like he this is what he
Speaker 1: figured happened, but it's that's not what really happened. Like
Speaker 1: it must have happened when it like went up when
Speaker 1: he was like submerged in water. So um, not necessarily lying,
Speaker 1: but there's no way for it to actually go into
Speaker 1: the peace dream, so he would be mistaken about that.
Speaker 1: Another weird thing is that the fish specimen from the
Speaker 1: alleged incident was preserved, but its head was too big
Speaker 1: to fit inside a urethra um. So the timeline is
Speaker 1: off because he was saying he had this happen right after,
Speaker 1: like like he went to the actor pretty quickly after
Speaker 1: this incident, So in order for the fish to get inside,
Speaker 1: it would require way more force than the fish would
Speaker 1: be capable of doing. Again, like, the only way for
Speaker 1: this to happen without without it just being completely made
Speaker 1: up would be this person mistakenly thought this was when
Speaker 1: he was infected with it, but when in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot earlier, a small like a baby one went up
Speaker 1: in and then like grew inside of him somehow worse worse,
Speaker 1: which is just conjecture because I'm not sure that's possible.
Speaker 1: But I'm just again, I'm trying. I'm trying to present
Speaker 1: the version of events in which like, it's not just
Speaker 1: like a big lie. It's just a misunderstanding, which often
Speaker 1: happens when it comes to you know, when a penis
Speaker 1: or a fish goes in your penis. The doctor who
Speaker 1: documented the case claimed that the candaroo is attracted to urine,
Speaker 1: which again that's a myth that has long been debunked.
Speaker 1: So already this doctor has made a mistake in you know,
Speaker 1: his own understanding of the situation. The same doctor claimed
Speaker 1: that the candaroo had chewed its way into the victims scrotum,
Speaker 1: but a candaroo does not have the jaw force 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 Dr Penish fish again. Oh, I forgot
Speaker 1: to mention the doctor and the Gray's Anatomy episode that
Speaker 1: the urologist who was examining this was called doctor Fisher. Yo. No, wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty awesome actually, and your name is May Fish.
Speaker 1: So obviously you have to become a neurologist and specialized
Speaker 1: in the candaroo fish because that's how it works, and
Speaker 1: that's how it works. And actually it's pretty exciting to
Speaker 1: find my calling right now this video. Essay, you have
Speaker 1: a great calling on YouTube, But like, was that really
Speaker 1: your true calling or was it all just set up
Speaker 1: for me to discover this? Yeah, like a penis fish fish,
Speaker 1: its penis, the push its penis fantastic. In this like
Speaker 1: quote unquote real life incident, the doctor again made another
Speaker 1: spurious claim, saying that he had to clip the fish's
Speaker 1: spines to extract it. But all those spines were intact
Speaker 1: on the preserved specimens, so that's not lining up either.
Speaker 1: So there was a sister scopy video. So assist scope
Speaker 1: is a small camera in light that goes into tight
Speaker 1: body spaces for surgeries or exams, and there is a
Speaker 1: video of it. But in this video, it shows the
Speaker 1: fish carcass being pulled out by forceps, which the author
Speaker 1: of this book contends would be impossible given the deserved specimens.
Speaker 1: Spikes being intact because they would like kind of snag
Speaker 1: on something. So maybe the specimen is not the actual
Speaker 1: one or something something is going on, but this video
Speaker 1: does exist, so it's like, well, what what is like
Speaker 1: did they like fake this video to go along with
Speaker 1: all this stuff or are there only certain aspects of
Speaker 1: the story that are that are not quite being told accurately.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if this is conclusively disproving the
Speaker 1: candaroos story because I'm not really sure why both the
Speaker 1: doctor and patient would make everything up, like just for
Speaker 1: attention or something, and they'd have to be working together
Speaker 1: to make it all up. Uh, So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's like a hundred person hoax. It could be, but
Speaker 1: my my guests would be it's like it's only partially
Speaker 1: true and then there's you know, some exaggeration going on.
Speaker 1: I think this maybe, I mean it could it could
Speaker 1: be a hoax though, because again, this is a this
Speaker 1: 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 incomplete like like, so you could have some
Speaker 1: truth to it. Right, So if the candoroo goes up,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're like submerged in the water, and
Speaker 1: then it enters that way, and then it's like it
Speaker 1: goes in when it's really small and then it just
Speaker 1: gets stuck and then gets bigger or something later on.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what happens, and then these other aspects of
Speaker 1: the myth are are made up just because that's people
Speaker 1: assume this is what happens that you like, uh, that
Speaker 1: that it swims up your peace stream or something. But
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know, because like I don't even like,
Speaker 1: how would if something is like growing inside, like a
Speaker 1: little fish is growing inside, like it seems like that
Speaker 1: would still obstruct your your urinary flow. So it seems
Speaker 1: like you'd have problems for a while. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: I I am very skeptical, though, I'm skeptical, right, like
Speaker 1: a freak animal freak accidents happen, But yeah, this seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it'd be hard for that little fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly it's not a fish that hunts down
Speaker 1: human penises and goes inside me at the penis. That
Speaker 1: part is absolutely not true. If it does happen, it's
Speaker 1: an accident. But there is such a thing as parasitic castration.
Speaker 1: It's just not something that happens to humans, thank god, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank goodness. If you're a crab or another type of animal,
Speaker 1: this may happen, uh, and we'll probably it, like we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show Carsonization, like the universe trends
Speaker 1: towards crabs. Maybe one day we'll evolve into crabs and
Speaker 1: we're going to have to worry about the crab go
Speaker 1: nad eating parasite, the Seculina carcini. So the Seculina carsony
Speaker 1: is a parasitic barnacle. I know, you wouldn't think like
Speaker 1: barnacles could be parasites. They seem like harmless little things
Speaker 1: that like sit on a whale and stuff. But there
Speaker 1: there are types of barnacles because like the barnacle itself, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not always just this like sort of hard shell
Speaker 1: that it forms. It is like a free swimming, little
Speaker 1: like sort of worm like thing. And so this one,
Speaker 1: the the Seculina carcini, can take over a crabs and
Speaker 1: testines stomach and nervous system near it's underbelly and feed
Speaker 1: on nutrients from the crab and what this does is,
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't like only specifically eat its gonads,
Speaker 1: by depriving like siphoning off all these nutrients, the gonads
Speaker 1: fail to fully develop uh inside of these poor crabs,
Speaker 1: So males will actually grew up to look a bit
Speaker 1: more like females because they don't have the male hormones
Speaker 1: that would be produced in their their gone outs, 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. So that's wild. Somehow, this this
Speaker 1: parasitic barnacle causes the crab to help raise the brood
Speaker 1: of these little parasitic barnacles, grooming them like it's their
Speaker 1: own brood of eggs, which is strange because they are
Speaker 1: 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. So they'll groom them
Speaker 1: like they're their own brood sec and then release them
Speaker 1: like that, Like because crabs do this thing when they're
Speaker 1: ready to release eggs where they kind of like go
Speaker 1: up in the in the waves and kind of like
Speaker 1: bob and shake and shimmy to get the eggs off
Speaker 1: of their abdomen and they kind of like usher them
Speaker 1: on um for their own eggs. But they do this
Speaker 1: the males will do this for the parasitic barnacle all
Speaker 1: the time, which is it's like very strange, very strange.
Speaker 1: Hormones are fascinating and wild. Yeah, so it isn't kind
Speaker 1: of heartwarmingly messed up situation, Yeah, it is. It is.
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: do their thing. I'm a zombie mommy. Yeah, zombie zombie mommies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very strange, very interesting. But I'll probably talk about
Speaker 1: more cases of parasitic castration on another episode, but I
Speaker 1: think I think we only need to do one example
Speaker 1: of the prop That is that that's probably the wildest
Speaker 1: animal fact I've heard in a while. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: sites are They're fascinating because when they modify their hosts
Speaker 1: behavior in such a strange way. It's like with screw flies,
Speaker 1: like they are a parasite, but they they're just gross
Speaker 1: and bad and they hurt you. It's like, okay, I
Speaker 1: get it, but when you have these very devious parasites,
Speaker 1: they are like you're the mom Now it's like parasites, alright. 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 kandaroo. We don't
Speaker 1: even need to fear these parasitic barnacles until the inevitable
Speaker 1: day that we evolve into crabs. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to that day. Yeah, you know what, scuttling,
Speaker 1: I feel like scuttling is underrated and I want to
Speaker 1: do more of it. I want to scuttle, scuttle about
Speaker 1: Scuttling is fun. You ever scuttled? I ever got kind
Speaker 1: a good scuttling? I skip, which I guess is like
Speaker 1: the human equivalent to a scuttle. Um. I've also rolling
Speaker 1: down hills, which also feels kind of like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I scuttle. Yeah, you know, when I was actually
Speaker 1: a kid, um, I learned about this is kind of
Speaker 1: a tangent, but like I learned about how lemurs because
Speaker 1: they kind of like hop side to side. They do
Speaker 1: this like fashhat kind of thing, and it looked really fun.
Speaker 1: So I started doing it, and then I found it's
Speaker 1: actually a really easy way to get around. So, you know,
Speaker 1: do this little lemur sacheting through the house. And my
Speaker 1: parents just thought I was just like dancing around. I
Speaker 1: was like, no, this is actually very efficient method of locomotion.
Speaker 1: I'm walking better than other humans. Lemurs are onto something,
Speaker 1: you guys. Yeah, uh yeah. So you know, scuttling it's
Speaker 1: pretty good as long as you don't get in acted
Speaker 1: by a barnacle parasite. That's gonna gonna make your nads
Speaker 1: kind of not work. That's the downside. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a downpap. Well, you know, I think we've
Speaker 1: busted some some folk tales and unbusted some not yet
Speaker 1: folk tales, but you know that probably should be some
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, like you said like this,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like you went through a lot
Speaker 1: of things that I had heard that I should be
Speaker 1: afraid of. Um. Yeah, I think we have all correctly
Speaker 1: aligned ourselves, um to be afraid of uh these little
Speaker 1: zombie crap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: it's I like to reassure and then unassure. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Don't get too comfortable. Now that I've
Speaker 1: reassured you this is okay. Now here's here's the here's
Speaker 1: a little spice, here's the alternative that you're the milk,
Speaker 1: and now here's the spice. Yeah yet, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being on today and for patiently listening
Speaker 1: through some of the more horrifying things we talked about. Hey,
Speaker 1: where can people find you on the internet? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if people want to find me, uh, you can look
Speaker 1: me up on Twitter and YouTube just at my name
Speaker 1: that you may fish m a E. That's how he
Speaker 1: spent my room, not the month. Um. Yeah. On Twitter,
Speaker 1: I'm usually just making jokes. Then on YouTube I do
Speaker 1: some fun film analysis, So check it out if that's
Speaker 1: your thing. Yes, do you check that out? She's got
Speaker 1: a very good video on on ca. Yeah. If you're
Speaker 1: into animals, that one might be the one hr you
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And you can find the show on the
Speaker 1: internet at Creature Future Pod on Instagram, at Creature Feet
Speaker 1: Pod on Twitter. That's eppts. You'revery different And if you
Speaker 1: want to send me in your questions, your pet pictures,
Speaker 1: your your crab pictures. Creature feature pod at gmail dot
Speaker 1: com is place to go. And thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you're enjoying the show and you have like a
Speaker 1: spare minute to press some buttons, if you leave a
Speaker 1: rating and review, that actually really really really helps. I
Speaker 1: know I say this every week, but it really does.
Speaker 1: And every time I read a new review it makes
Speaker 1: my day. Uh, so, thank you so much. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that. And thanks to the space Coastics where there's
Speaker 1: super awesome song x Alumina. Creature features a production of
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you
Speaker 1: just heard in your ear holds not filled with spiders,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast, or Hey,
Speaker 1: guess what where are you listening? If he knows wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows, I don't judge you.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next Wednesday. Bye guys,