HELP! Penis eating fish

[Shale]

Help!

I read (I think) a Billy Wildhack sex news article about some Asian country where some unknown fish was swimming up urine streams and biting off fishermen's penis. Two deaths and several injuries as I recall.

Been searching for archives but cannot find the source. I want to use the info as a resource for article about mens' fear of swimming naked. Does anyone recall the story and know a link to the source?

Thanx

Shale

 

[Pokerman]

Sounds like this, from the urban legends section of About.com:

http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa071900a.htm

"The stories of the spiders and such reminded me of a story I was told in Boy Scouts about using a river as a bathroom. Who knows how true this is (I think they told it more to scare us but some may have believed it), but our Scoutmasters always insisted that there were small, parasitic fish in some rivers (particularly the Amazon) that could swim up the urine stream and get inside you. "

REPLY:

Much as it may sound like an old scoutmaster's tale, the parasitic fish you refer to does exist. Actual close encounters with the candiru Vandellia cirrhosa) must be fairly rare, judging from the dearth of medical literature on it, but it's still high up on my personal list of Scary Things to Avoid.

The candiru is a member of the catfish family and can be found in lakes and streams of the Amazon region. It's tiny – only about an inch long – and, according to the Enyclopedia Britannica, "has been known to enter the urethras of bathers and swimming animals." That's hardly the worst of it.

"Once in the passage," the Britannica continues, "it erects the short spines on its gill covers and may thereby cause inflammation, hemorrhage, and even death to the victim." And the little bugger can only be removed by surgery.

Why, you ask, would a fish want to swim up there in the first place? Audubon magazine explains:

"Candirus primarily set up house inside larger fish, where they feast on the host's blood. They are attracted to nitrogen, which usually leads them to a gill chamber, but apparently they can't distinguish between one nitrogen-emitting orifice and another: They have been known to follow a stream of urine right to its source."


So there you go...hope it helped.

 

[Shale]

Thank you so much for the added info on this subject. I am slightly phobic about swimming in the ocean, especially since Florida is the shark attack capitol of the world, but last week something bit a man's toe off our beach. Did some damage to the toe, so just imagine you guys who swim nude!!!

If I ever get to the Amazon, I'll make a point not to skinny dip there.

Shale

 

[JUDO]

Fish?

Shale-

Well, dangling (or otherwise) penii (<-plural?) make for such enticing lures underwater anyway.

Are you sure it wasn't a mermaid instead?

- Judo

 

[Ray Dario]

All I can say is Damn! If you guys have got cocks so big that a one inch long fish can swim up your urine stream and actually get into your little pee hole without you noticing then Damn!

And by the way, this is a good reason to watch when you are pissing, not just so you don't miss the pot, but in case there are fish in the urinal!

Ray

 

[Paolo Labico]

Man's worst Fear

ouch!