Um, minor point maybe, but why would a urniophillic fish (or a pee-phillic piscene, if you prefer) swim into a vagina? As far as I can tell, both males and females pass urine through a urethra. In males, it goes through the penis; in females, it has its own separate smaller opening just forward of the vagina.
If you ask me, (and I know you didn’t) this smacks of the UL about the lobster and the toilet.
And of course, Cecil’s column can be found here:
Can the candiru fish swim upstream into your urethra? (19-May-2000)
missdavis102 wrote:
Maybe because soft tissue is soft tissue to a fish that makes its living ‘in the gill cavities of larger fish, where it subsists by sucking the blood of its host.’
Nitpick: the ‘lobster/mudshrimp’ is a juvenile hoax, not an urban legend.
Any port in a storm,
Andrew Warinner
Redmond O"Hanlon, in his book, “In Trouble Again,” journeyed up the Amazon in search of the Yanomami tribesmen. In preparation for his trip, Remond had read of the cadiru fish, and had fashioned some protective underwear for himself.
Once he was underway, he asked his guide if the stories about the cadiru were true. His guide said that occasionally when dead bodies were fished out of the river with cadiru fish crammed into every orifice of the corpse, including the urinary tracts. However, it seemed to be the opinion of the guide that the fish made their way in after the person was dead.
I don’t feel that Cecil provided the “straight dope” on the Candiru fish. It was a valient attempt though, but didn’t prove/disprove the matter.
As for the OP–Maybe when the fish in question gets in the vicinity of the female urethra (while the bather is submerged and unprotected) it makes a mistake and goes up the wrong hole. Even humans make mistakes and go in the wrong hole!
Why doesn’t someone take a trip to the Amazon river with a sports bottle (with a plastic straw attached!) full of warm urine. Invert the bottle and insert the tip of the straw just below the river water’s surface, lightly squeeze. When you’re done check for transparent fish in the bottle (or straw). Cecil, it’s time for a vacation.
This sounds like a piss-poor experiment to me.
samclem, does that mean that you’re volunteering to perform a better experiment? 
I like Silo’s idea, personally.
Actually, Silo’s experiment sounds like the right thing. I have to be in a remote location(need to know basis,only) that week, or I would volunteer.
I can understand if certain people (secure in the knowledge that they will never swim the Amazon) feel disappointed that the candiru may not live up to its leg-crossing reputation.
However, fear not, there are worms (Schistosoma haematobium comes to mind) whice will gladly swim up your urethra and infest your body. If they lack the spiny gill plates of the candiru, they do have compensatory advantages: being able to penetrate through through the skin in many cases; laying eggs in the liver, brain and spinal cord, etc.; causing bladder cancer and even being the leading cause of blindness in much of the world.
In Egypt, there are hieroglyph/frescos showing farmers (who relied on the annual flooding of the Nile) wearing large crude condoms as they planted. Schistosomiasis is even prominently mentioned in the Ebers papyrus, and signs of Schistosoma parasites (eggs and antigens) have been found inside mummies of even the ruling class.
S. Haematobium is found in 54 countries in Africa and on the Mediterranian, and its cousins (S. mekongi, mansoni, japonica, and intercalatum), while less likely to swim up a urethra, can be found in the Carribean, Africa, South America and the Pacific region. So have heart - there is hope for you yet. I’ve seen brain x-rays of calcified cysts (dead “worms”) in Americans. True, they probably came from travel abroad, but one never knows…
Now go curl up in bed and hide. I’m off call in 8 minutes, and you can bet I will!
Get a pool, a nice chlorinated pool.
Regarding the article On the introduction of exotic freshwater fish species to the South Pacific mentioned at the end of the answer - take a closer look at the attributions. I don’t think you’ll find Hugh Dunnit and Hans Kneesun-Boompsadaisy listed in Who’s Who In Science And Engineering.
DES
Good catch DES!
Cecil says: <<One last thing. Lest you think the candiru is all bad news, one visionary has proposed them, apparently seriously, as a key prong in a “fish-based security system” for the South Pacific>>
Was Cecil serious when he said apparently seriously?
Look at the name/address of the authors:
Hugh Dunnit & Hans Kneesun-Boompsadaisy
Goliath Consultants Inc,
Upper Choirboy, Hampshire
And from reading these paragraphs,
It’s pretty clear that this must be a joke.
For those of us who are too logic-impaired to comprehend the foregoing analysis or too scatter-brained to even read it in its entirety, clicking on the link at the bottom of the “fish-based security system” page takes you up one level where we find that the article is one of several on a page titled “Just for fun”.
I always suspected that the old saw “Ichthyologists have more fun” was true, but now I am sure it is so.
P.S. I suspect that Winkelried et alia may want to consider a lawsuit against the page’s authors based on what I can only pray are the slanderous remarks and diagrams in the Tagger Tagging article.
kjsheehan said:
I’m sure they meant fishery administrators, and not unrelated web board administrators.
(Took me a while to find that one.)