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