Little Candiru catfish is the most fierce Amazon fish. This is the only vertebral parasitic in the blood of its victim. Despite its small size (two to three millimeters in thickness), the candiru can significantly inflate. The catfish clings to the victim’s body with its sharp fins, and the only way to remove it is surgery. Candiru is a fish that people on the Amazon coast fear more than piranhas. What causes such fear? Let's find out.
Description
Catfish obviously did not succeed in growth, as a rule, individuals not larger than a match are found. The body is lean, thin, so the fish is almost transparent. Hungry, the candiru begins to search for a victim, and chooses a larger fish. Even in the opaque, muddy waters of the Amazon, an excellent sense of smell helps to find it. When a candiru fish feels a characteristic flow of water, which the victim ejects through the gills when breathing, and captures the smell of ammonia (a metabolic product of fish, partially eliminated by breathing from their body), it rushes forward.
Victim attack
Having found the fish, Candira creeps into the slot directly under the gill cover and then is well fixed in the gills of the victim. The catfish does this with the help of spikes located on the fins, so much so that no forces can get rid of it, even the most powerful stream of water that passes through the gills does not help.
Now the Candiru fish starts the meal. With knowledge of the matter, she bites a hole in the tissues of fish gills, blood starts to ooze from her, which feeds the catfish. This explains another name for candiru - "Brazilian vampire." The fish eats quickly, the time from the beginning of the meal to full saturation is from thirty seconds to two minutes. Then the candiru detaches from the victim and swims away.
Danger to humans
A terrible thing happens when a catfish makes a mistake when choosing a master. The victim may be a human or another mammal, and then the consequences can be most serious.
The fact is that the smell of water flowing from the gills of fish can be confused with the smell of urine, which is excreted by mammals and humans in the water. In this case, the catfish can by mistake get into the body of any animal or person. The parasite is able to crawl into the vagina or anus, and small individuals penetrate even into the penis and move on up to the bladder.
Defeats of people are very rare, but for the victims the consequences are extremely serious. In the human body, candida feeds on surrounding tissues and blood, which causes bleeding and severe pain in the victim. If you do not provide medical assistance to the victim in time, a catfish lesion can lead to death.
Once in the human body, the candiru (fish) cannot get out of it on its own, because people are atypical owners for catfish. Often, without surgical intervention, a fish cannot be removed from the ureters of a person. This catfish and keeps in fear the natives living along the shores of the Amazon.
Indian method
In 1941, an American magazine on surgery published an article about Candyra. The fish, according to the authors, can be expelled from the human body through the use of one miracle drink. It turns out that this method was invented by the Indians. to expel the catfish from the body, they prepared a special composition from the fruits of the deciduous tree of the jagua, which grows in most tropical regions of America and reaches twenty meters in height. The fruits of the jagua are like oranges, they are covered with a peel of yellow-brown color. From the pulp of these fruits, the Indians prepared an acidic drink that perfectly quenches thirst. According to them, if you give it to a person whose body is hit by a candir, then in a few minutes the parasite will leave its victim.
Behavior features
Regarding what exactly attracts catfish to the human genitals, zoologists have made various assumptions. The most plausible version is that candiru is a fish that is extremely sensitive to the smell of urine: it happened that it attacked a person only a few seconds after he urinated in water.
However, the catfish does not always penetrate the victim. Sometimes, overtaking prey, he bites his skin with long teeth and begins to suck out blood. From this, the body of the fish itself swells and swells. After eating, the catfish sinks to the bottom.
Treatment and consequences
If a person who was hit by a Candyra fish doesn’t have surgery on time, he may die. In most cases, the surgery is without serious consequences. Residents of the Amazon coast traditionally use folk treatment. In the place of attachment of the catfish, they introduce the juices of two plants, in particular, the genips. As a result, the candiru dies, and then decomposes.
