Whale of a Tale

really be scared of. Discover this more as we answer to the ansual 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, Gaty, Welcome back to the show. Thank you. I I'm actually really excited for this episode because I like to be greatly afraid.

I 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 um 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 close see if I really should be afraid of you? Okay, are you still cub or you? Oh? I see that you've like bit my arm off. All right, you're right, you you from criteria. You ken 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 are 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 instead. I absolutely believe that he

was swallowed by a whale. 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 pet that they put chum. But

so 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 it was like this human. You know, depending on where he's from, it could be very salty human, it could be very sweet, could have some undertoned um. So it seems like he was just you know, 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 going to happen, at least not an adult like that. So humpback whales are not They are carnivores, but they're 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 right right right exactly, some 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 Somali a thing. Probably what happened was a mistake. So probably 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, that's like it's got a bunch of brooms in its mouth or something. Uh, And it's it's not teeth, it's to filter out. They suck in a huge volume of water and then goose it out, push it all out, and then trap all the fish uh in the in the bailing. So like when it's a human, they can't even really bite your teeth, So they're not they're not gonna chew you up and

swallow you. Uh. 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, um it can expell, especially for a huge whale that is 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 have to kind of like like put your arms forward like that you'd have to treat it right, you have to 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 the stomach, this is

not gonna be a story. Yeah, but yeah, So in fact, there's really only one whale in the world who could without chewing, just easily swallow a human whole, and that would be a sperm whale who can and have swallowed giant squid and they've found like a cold 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 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've we know exactly like how

they're mating, goes and all these things. There. There are a lot of mysteries about sperm whales and another deep sea living whales, and they do come up to 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. Uh yeah, sinking into their I mean the lungs and internal organs would turn into a kind of jello salad

at that point. So the furthest a human can die 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 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 whale 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 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 rault? 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 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 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 stomach is a big empty, air filled

cavern with fire there, with a little fire. And the problem with that is actually, oh, whale, deep diving whales, like sperm whales, will push out all air that isn't like all the air in 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 bends, which is a result of like the the dissolving of air into the blood dream. It's it's not it's bad, bad for yourselves, bad for

your tissues. And then it's also their uh, 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 there, rungs 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 they can withstand that, whereas we we can't our 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 horshow. Yeah. So actually, so do you know why 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, well, I'm gonna admit that I just learned this,

so don't feel don't feel bad about it. And I was thinking, like, there's got to be like an innocuate because like it's like a little sperm whales, you know, yeah, go for it, Okay. I think maybe they have something to do with the things like their blubber resembles sperm

very close. You're very very close. Yeah, yeah, they are. Actually, they used to be called sperma chetti 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 sperma chetti and it's called sperma chetti because people thought this was the whale semenow it's not, it is not um. It is in fact a sort of waxy, oily substance that

has nothing to do with reproduction. But because they were dirty sailor as they called them, spermatchety whales, and they made candles and stuff out of this, so it was it's so crazy because they they're like, oh, yeah, this is probably the whale 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 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. 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 often instead of a swim bladder full of a gas like like fish that are more near the service 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 from the head. So basically, 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 actually at the end of the day, all 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 snake. I know you do. You have a little python of

your own, not articulated python. But he's a ball python, right yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's not gonna he's not gonna swallow you whole anytime soon. But the articulated python, while this is very rare, they can swallow a person hole. 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 a hundred and sixty five pounds or seventy fives 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. Uh, 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. They've been right, right, They just aren't. They aren't connected like

a human jaw. So so they can expand their jaws much as their mouth skin can stretch, and they can swallow enormous prey such as pigs and even small cows sometimes. Yeah, unfortunately, this means they can also swallow a human. In 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 if a python is just like try 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 the prey. Yeah, they kill their prey by suffocating their victims. So they sneak up on you, um, 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 while 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're 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, I'm gonna say it kindly puts you out of your misery. Very sweet of it, very kind of 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 reiculated python. You know, from the python's point of view, what what a masterful

way to eat you? Just you kill it, You crush until it's just a tiny little tube of Yeah, like you can suck it down like a yogurtgurt. Well, to be fair, they don't. When they crush their their victims, 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 really swallow their prey head first because that's just easier, easier to go in. When I feed my snake, yeah, always eats the head first, and yeah, you see it like makes it makes sense. You know. The body, well, it's like the arms, you know, it's it's just kind of smoothes 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, doesn't have to be a human. It can be like a pig or 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 deal like that. So, unfortunately, both for the human and for the snake, if it does eat a human,

this is ideal for the reticulated python. Obviously it's not an ideal for the 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 give a stomach impaction. Uh. 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. It's to graphic, but yeah, when my uh little python goes to the bathroom, there's like he's regular, but then there's like a little ball of white which is like like fur and bone

kind of just yeah conjeweled 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 vet for the towel to be pulled out. Video. Yeah,

poor baby. Of course, we feel so sorry for for the python that aid to human I mean I 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 relevant 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 U. 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 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 if you're older or smaller, like, as soon as they buy 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, but they're you know, yeah, they don't understand, they don't you know. They they just snake. 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 they were 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, 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 spider. 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 giant spider. A giant spider. Yeah, yeah, so I think, uh, 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 tried 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. If you, yeah, 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 of 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 that, there's really not truth to that. The other one is that spiders will lay eggs in your ears or your brain. A very popular scary stories to tell him the dark story. Yeah, yeah, like a spider lays eggs in someone's skin or something. Is that the one YEA thinks it and then it's just spiders. Yeah, yeah, so spiders for actunately, 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. Uh. They mistake it for like a little nook or cranny. They don't realize you're alive.

If they did, they would freak out. It'd be 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. 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 s bob, because that can either damage your ear or you can like scare the the insect in 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 it's like it's kind of cold outside and you find this cozy little cave 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're gonna like run deeper into the cave and then like the giant monster and says, going to freak out even more. So what you should do is just go to a doctor. What

you should do. Yeah, So so if you 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 sailing and and the little spider or or whatever insect will just come out surfing on a wave of sailing because that way, that way just like kind of flushes it out, and then it will also like want to get out, like it'll swim to the surface of the sailing 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 snoozeworthy. Like it's very very bugs 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 I'll 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. Um. You know, if you want to skip ahead, like if you have tripophobia 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 your wreathros So if that also sounds to 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, um, you know, join us back in at this time stamp take it away, future Katie. All right, so for those of you, thanks, thanks toture Katie, and now back to pass Katie. So now we're gonna 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 America's So the adult version looks benign, just like a standard fly. I in the show notes, I've included a picture of the the adult in the larva, and absolutely no other pictures of what happens with screw Thank 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 it's both look very Yeah normal, you got a normal larva. Yeah,

And they're called screw worms. Because the 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. And I saw that going around, I'd be like checks out. That's you know, not start to worry about it getting

inside your body, but you probably should. So. Female screw flies 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 uh and on multiple asians 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 um look for an opening like a literal opening, for a literal opening. But this could even be something like in newborn animals. Often like they 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, and 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 to 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 road kill or something and then end speaking profectperience your kid, you go over look at the road kill. Yeah it's like covered in maggot 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 healing sometimes, not that I recommend letting your wound get to the point where it's maggots without the dead flesh, but they just eat the dead flesh. 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 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, maggots 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 if the if it's a small enough mammal like 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. 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 and the result from that. Um before you panic, uh, the US eradicated screw worms in two so so screw rooms are endemic to the America's so uh mostly like like in sort of the southern areas of the US and in South America again

so SO 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 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 uh 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 screwworms in Florida in 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, uh, it was a pretty pretty good, uh good job for eradicating Yeah, yeah, which you know, I don't know enough about the uh sort of you know, food pyramid of screw worms to know like what effect that would have or had on

the environment. Um, So it's like it's kind these things are it's like you balance like the human need of of these over the nature creating worms that can you know, burrow into sea. And it was like a big problem with livestock to not just like humans, so big big problem with like our 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 of 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 overhear yeah, or do only use it on

a species that you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly for it. Yeah, And so Guatemala, Belize and El Savador also araunddicated their screw worm 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, and there was a nineteen seventies seven short story called

The screw Fly 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 morder them for uh 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 uh uh 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 strives to turn into murderous impulses because the aliens want to eradicate humans so they can live on earth instead. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I'm not against it. God, wait a minute, how many eyes do you have, Maggie? Uh? Or normal?

It's It was also used in another inspiration for another story, and Carmen Mola's eighteen detective novel not No Via Jitana describes the screw worm 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,

fun harder 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 lighthearted stories, you know, light romp about aliens killing off humans and and you know, flesh eating larva being used as a murder weapon. Real fun stuff. Yeah, 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 that kiddy stuff, yeah, and eats penises. It's totally fine. Just you know what, so this is Yeah, I'm not worried at all. So, Maggie, I think a lot of people have heard of the Candoru penis fish. Uh. It is a fish that allegedly will swim up your peace stream and go inside of your pea hole. I think it's typically the ideas 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, it's gonna say it's warm, so itsumably

that's part of it, but you can you must. It's got to be like a steady stream, I guess, can't be like drunk peeing right where you just spreading every Yeah, and then this little fish, apparently according to legend, will swim up this peace 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 pianist or just hang out in there. That part's unclear. This was made popular by an episode of Gray's Anatomy noted very

accurate medical show. Very accurate? Is I actually only watched that show to diagnose Yeah, not even friends yet. I'm basically like a doctor now, and I think you have a rare case of necrotizing fasciitis, like I have a headache. Yeah, I think you should go to the hospital. Also, there's any hot doctors hanging out? Yeah, it is kind of. It does give you the sense that like every doctor is going to 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 inside of 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, like take out the fish that's in your pan. 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 uh, here here it is. Here is there, very realistic doctor discussion. The penis fish. Sorry you find it back a little longer. Amazing penis fish. All right, I'm gonna wind it back just a little further. Mm. Looks like some kind of foreign check that almost looks like a skeleton. It's skeleton like,

definitely skeleton bobs. Can't be it could be. It looks like a teeny tiny cash fish. Close. See there those are spines. This is a candaroo fish. The penis fish. This guy has the penis fish in his his The penist fish. This guy has the penis fish. It is penis like the penis. He's got the penis fish. Yeah, 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 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 candaroo is a very real fish, but the rumors of its affinity for the human penis maybe slightly overstated or maybe greatly overstated. It's a bit of a puzzle. So the candaroo is a small then catfish found in freshwater rivers of the Amazon. It's also called a toothpick fish 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 yeah, if you well, we'll talk about that. Okay, So what do we absolutely know about candaroos. They are blood suckers. They will enter the gill cavities of fish and suck on the fish

is 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 bloods start off really thin and then they get like this full belly

of blood. It's 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. Um. 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 p hole. 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. In eighteen fifty five, another biologist was regaled with tales of a fish that would swim up peastree um. 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. It would need a type of propulsion. The fluid dynamics of it don't make sense. Yeah, that no, none of the It's this idea that like a salmon could you know, like like salmon's would like jump up a waterfall, but somehow you could do that like in a stream of p and it would just like swim up. It actually impossible from a fluid dynamic and fish physics perspective.

It's thought 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 swim up to it, not because they like the smell of pea like their little freaks, or that they to swim up your peace stream magically

using their magic fluid dynamics 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 of your urethra? I don't think it could do it by traveling up a peace string if you're like in the water,

could it potentially get inside like a peniss p hole. 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 to age Nina, you're actually much more likely to have to tingle with

the Canada. Uh. It's not that it's gonna go up your urethra, because you know, female anatomy, the vagina is not the eure throat. 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 box that from the uterus. So there are a few documented cases in the late eighteen hundreds of the candaroo entering the vagina. But uh, 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. Uh a little more room, right exactly. Uh. And again this was probably a mistake. The candaroo was thinking that it was going in the gills of a fish that it normally prays on, but it's it's, you know, a vagina. Oops, yeah it So in seven the only documented case of a candaroo entering a penis occurred in Brazil. The twenty three year old man claimed that candaroo 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 biologists Steven Spotty, who investigated and wrote a book in two thousand two called Kandaroo Life and Legend of the blood Sucking 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 said, these things, these

aspects of the story don't quite make sense. So either there's some mistakes in like how this this uh um was recorded, or some misunderstandings, or maybe some aspects of it were made up. You know, people have been known to lie about things to be humanist, to air describing what to h yes, to be humanists to air on what went up your penis hull uh So the victim claimed that the candaroo 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. Um. 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 um. 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 um, not necessarily lying, but there's no way for it to actually go into the peace dream, so he would be mistaken about that. 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 um. So the timeline is off because he was saying he had this happen right after, like like he went to the actor 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 is just conjecture because I'm not sure that's possible. 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. The doctor who documented the case claimed that the candaroo 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 candaroo had chewed its way into the victims scrotum, but a candaroo does not have the jaw force 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 Dr Penish fish again. Oh, I forgot to mention the doctor and the Gray's Anatomy episode that

the urologist who was examining this was called doctor Fisher. Yo. No, wow, that's pretty awesome actually, and your name is May Fish. So obviously you have to become a neurologist and specialized in the candaroo fish because that's how it works, and that's how it works. And actually it's pretty exciting to find my calling right now this video. Essay, you have a great calling on YouTube, But like, was that really your true calling or was it all just set up

for me to discover this? Yeah, like a penis fish fish, its penis, the push its 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 those spines were intact on the preserved specimens, so that's not lining up either. So there was a sister scopy video. So assist scope 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 deserved 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 candaroos 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. Uh, So I'm not sure it's like a hundred person hoax. It could be, but my my guests would be it's like it's only partially true and then there's you know, some exaggeration going on.

I think this maybe, 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 incomplete like like, so you could have some

truth to it. Right, So if the candoroo 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 would still obstruct your your urinary flow. So it seems like you'd have problems for a while. I just don't know. I I am very skeptical, though, I'm skeptical, right, like a freak animal freak accidents happen, But yeah, this seems like,

you know, yeah, it'd be hard for that little fish. Yeah, but it's certainly it's not a fish that hunts down human penises and goes inside me at 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. If you're a crab or another type of animal, this may happen, uh, and we'll probably it, like we've talked about on the show Carsonization, like the universe trends towards crabs. Maybe one day we'll evolve into crabs and we're going to have to worry about the crab go nad 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 there are types of barnacles because like the barnacle itself, uh, 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 the Seculina carcini, can take over a crabs and testines stomach and nervous system near it's 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 uh inside of these poor crabs, So males will actually grew up to look a bit more like females because they don't have the male hormones

that would be produced in their their gone outs, 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 that's wild. Somehow, this 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 are 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. So they'll groom them like they're their own brood sec and then release them like that, Like because crabs do this thing when they're ready to release eggs where they kind of like go up in the 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 um for their own eggs. But they do this the males will do this for the parasitic barnacle all the time, which is it's like very strange, very strange. Hormones are fascinating and wild. Yeah, so it isn't kind of heartwarmingly messed up situation, Yeah, it is. It is. You know, it's like kind of cute in a way, like, well, I guess I'm a mommy, you know, and then they do their thing. I'm a zombie mommy. Yeah, zombie zombie mommies. Yeah,

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 prop That is that that's probably the wildest animal fact I've heard in a while. Yeah. Yeah, it's sites are They're fascinating because when they modify their hosts behavior in such a strange way. It's like with screw flies, like they are a parasite, but they they're just gross

and bad and they hurt you. It's like, okay, I get it, but when you have these very devious parasites, they are like you're the mom Now it's like parasites, alright. Yeah, yeah, it's so strange, so so very strange and interesting. But yeah, we don't really need to fear the kandaroo. 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, scuttle about Scuttling is fun. You ever scuttled? I ever got kind a good scuttling? I skip, which I guess is like the human equivalent to a scuttle. Um. 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, um, 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 fashhat 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. I was like, no, this is actually very efficient method of locomotion. I'm walking better than other humans. Lemurs are onto something, you guys. Yeah, uh yeah. So you know, scuttling it's pretty good as long as you don't get in acted by a barnacle parasite. That's gonna gonna make your nads kind of not work. That's the downside. That's a little

bit of a downpap. 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. Um. Yeah, I think we have all correctly aligned ourselves, um to be afraid of uh these little zombie crap. 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 the here's a little spice, here's the alternative that you're the milk, and now here's the spice. Yeah yet, 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 that you may fish m a E. That's how he spent my room, not the month. Um. Yeah. On Twitter, I'm usually just making jokes. Then on YouTube I do some fun film analysis, So check it out if that's your thing. Yes, do you check that out? She's got

a very good video on on ca. Yeah. If you're into animals, that one might be the one hr you Uh yeah, And you can find the show on the internet at Creature Future Pod on Instagram, at Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's eppts. You'revery 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 place to go. And thank you so much

for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. And uh, if you're enjoying the show and you have like a spare minute 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 really does. And every time I read a new review it makes my day. Uh, so, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And thanks to the space Coastics where there's super awesome song x Alumina. Creature features a production of

my Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard in your ear holds not filled with spiders, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast, or Hey, guess what where are you listening? If he knows wherever you listen to your favorite shows, I don't judge you. I'll see you next Wednesday. Bye guys,