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