Editing Candiru (fish) (section)

===Modern cases===
To date, there is only one documented case of a candiru entering a human urethra, which took place in [[Itacoatiara, Amazonas|Itacoatiara]], [[Brazil]], in 1997.<ref name=Spotte-2002>{{Cite book |last1= Spotte |first1= Stephen |title= Candiru: life and legend of the bloodsucking catfishes |year= 2002 |publisher= Creative Arts Book Co. |location= Berkeley, Calif. |isbn= 0-88739-469-8 }}</ref> In this incident, the victim (a 23-year-old man named Silvio Barbossa, also known as "F.B.C.") claimed a candiru "jumped" from the water into his urethra as he urinated while thigh-deep in a river.<ref name=cecil>{{cite web |url= https://www.straightdope.com/21343429/can-the-candiru-fish-swim-upstream-into-your-urethra-revisited|title=Can the candiru fish swim upstream into your urethra (revisited)? |work=The Straight Dope |date=7 September 2001}}</ref> After traveling to [[Manaus]] on October 28, 1997, the victim underwent a two-hour [[urology|urological]] surgery by Dr. Anoar Samad to remove the fish from his body.{{cn|date=November 2024}}

In 1999, American [[marine biologist]] Stephen Spotte traveled to Brazil to investigate this particular incident in detail. He recounts the events of his investigation in his book ''Candiru: Life and Legend of the Bloodsucking Catfishes''.<ref name=Spotte-2002/> Spotte met Dr. Samad in person and interviewed him at his practice and home. Samad gave him photos, the original VHS tape of the [[cystoscopy]] procedure, and the actual fish's body preserved in [[formalin]] as his donation to the [[National Institute of Amazonian Research]].<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|217}} Spotte and his colleague Paulo Petry took these materials and examined them at the institute, comparing them with Samad's formal paper. While Spotte did not overtly express any conclusions as to the veracity of the incident, he did remark on several observations that were suspicious about the claims of the patient and/or Samad himself.

* According to Samad, the patient claimed "the fish had darted out of the water, up the urine stream, and into his urethra." While this is the most popularly known legendary trait of the candiru, according to Spotte it has been known conclusively to be a myth for more than a century, as it is impossible because of simple fluid physics.<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|216}}
* The documentation and specimen provided indicate a fish that was 133.5&nbsp;mm in length and had a head with a diameter of 11.5&nbsp;mm. This would have required significant force to pry the urethra open to this extent. The candiru has no appendages or other apparatus that would have been necessary to accomplish this, and if it were leaping out of the water as the patient claimed, it would not have had sufficient leverage to force its way inside.<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|218}}
* Samad's paper claims the fish must have been attracted by the urine.{{cn|date=November 2024}} This belief about the fish has been held for centuries, but was discredited in 2001.<ref name="Spotte-etal" /> While this was merely speculation on Samad's part based on the prevailing scientific knowledge at the time, it somewhat erodes the patient's story by eliminating the motivation for the fish to have attacked him in the first place.
* Samad claimed the fish had "chewed" its way through the ventral wall of the urethra into the patient's [[scrotum]]. Spotte notes that the candiru does not possess the right teeth or strong enough dentition to have been capable of this.<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|214}} Additionally, the fish would most likely have died<ref name=":0" /> before it could have chewed even a somewhat large part of what was needed to reach it.
* Samad claimed he had to snip the candiru's grasping spikes off in order to extract it, yet the specimen provided had all its spikes intact.<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|218}}
* The cystoscopy video depicts traveling into a tubular space (presumed to be the patient's urethra) containing the fish's carcass and then pulling it out backwards through the urethral opening,<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|217}} something that would have been almost impossible with the fish's spikes intact.<ref name=Spotte-2002/>{{rp|215}}

When subsequently interviewed, Spotte stated that even if a person were to urinate while "submerged in a stream where candiru live", the odds of that person being attacked by candiru are "(a)bout the same as being struck by lightning while simultaneously being eaten by a shark."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=G03t9cWFRSsC&pg=PA281&dq=%22simultaneously+being+eaten+by+a+shark%22 ''Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures''] (via [[Google Books]]), by Bill Schutt, published by [[Random House]], 2008</ref>