Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [92]
According to a November 26, 2002, article in the Niagara Falls Reporter, by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hanchette, the man, identified only as FBC*147 was discharged after five days in the hospital, reportedly with no long-term effects from the encounter. The interesting thing, however, was that the patient’s story had changed, igniting a firestorm of controversy that swept through candiru conspiracy buffs. FBC now claimed that he had not been submerged in the river when the attack occurred. Rather, he was standing in thigh-high water when the candiru leaped from the river, darted through the urine stream, and lodged itself in his penis. After losing what can only be envisioned as a furious, but short-lived battle, FBC watched in horror as the five-and-a-half-inch candiru disappeared into this traumatized chouriço.
Could this happen? University of Calgary biomechanics expert Dr. John E. A. Bertram doesn’t think so.
“In order to swim up a pee stream, the fish would have to swim faster than the stream flow. Additionally, to climb the stream, the candiru would have to lift itself out of the water against gravity. And while a small fish might be able to jump a surprising distance through the relatively low resistance air—a stream of urine would be another story.”
“Why’s that?” I queried.
“Because the penis tip acts as a very efficient nozzle,” he said, “creating a stream of specific form, largely due to its high velocity of flow. Presumably, this keeps us from urinating on our feet. In any event, even if the candiru could power itself up the stream, it would have to stay completely within the urine and that would be difficult.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Because the narrow urine stream has boundaries with the relatively low-density air. If the fish wandered into this boundary, the low resistance flow of the air would destabilize it—essentially pulling the candiru out of the high-drag pee stream.”
I mentioned this explanation to Stephen Spotte, who agreed with Bertram. “I just don’t see how it’s possible,” he said. “The candiru would be trying to swim, and the lateral sweeps of its tail would be wider than the urine stream. So in addition to destabilizing its body, it wouldn’t be able to generate the thrust it needed.”
“So was this Brazilian guy just making it up?”
“I don’t think so,” Spotte said. “I mean he didn’t even know what candirus were, so it’s hard to believe that he invented the story. I still think he was, you know, pissing right at the surface—and then it would be possible.”
“How so?”
“If you’ve ever watched these things feeding in an aquarium, they shove themselves right under a fish gill—I mean it’s a rapid, violent motion. It happens instantaneously—you can’t even see it. So it’s possible that this fish got up there so quickly that the guy didn’t even have time to react. That part I believe.”
“How long do you think a candiru could survive inside a human urethra?” I asked.
“Catfish can live a long time in pretty dire circumstances,” Spotte replied, and I noticed that his voice had taken on an ominous tone.
“How long are we talking about?” I asked, a little fearfully. “A couple of minutes?”
“More like a couple of hours,” he said, “although this one was certainly dead by the time they pulled it out of the victim.”
I was almost afraid to ask the next question. “When was that?”
“They did the surgery three days after the guy came in. Besides the pain in his penis, I can’t even imagine what it was like not being able to urinate for three days. Dr. Samad said that his abdomen was swollen like a soccer ball. He was a tough dude.”
So why would a candiru abandon its normal, gill-feeding lifestyle for a visit to the Telegraph Office? In his book, Stephen Spotte reviewed several current hypotheses.
In the “urine-loving