Giant Candiru Deadly 60 Bites

On Deadly 60 I've had loads of incredible animal encounters.

Here's just one of my many favourites.

This is Deadly 60 Bites.

This time on Deadly 60...

we're here, in Brazil in South America.

And this is the Amazon Rainforest, the largest jungle in the world.

So what are we doing on a boat? Well, round here, this time of year,

an awful lot of that forest is underwater.

This will be our base for the next week.

From it, the team and I will explore an area called the flooded forest.

And it's exactly that - a gigantic jungle that

for half the year is under millions of tons of water

with just the tops of the trees showing.

Everything that lives here has adapted to the water.

For the local people, boats are used for everything

from doing the school run to picking up the shopping.

The wildlife is very distinctive with amazing birds, mammals,

reptiles, bugs and the odd fish or two.

Quite a lot of them...are deadly.

It's only our first night on our Amazon riverboat,

and something strange has been spotted

circling around in the waters.

So I head down to investigate.

It was something infinitely more scary than a piranha.

Oh, my goodness. Look at that!

Oh, that is grotesque!

The strange ghostly shapes were a kind of catfish

called giant candiru.

Normal candiru are about the size of my little finger,

so these ones are relative monsters.

Oh, look at that! It's got right into the belly cavity.

That is one single bite.

It just looks like he's bored a hole

straight into the gut of that fish.

-That is horrible.

-That is absolutely horrid.

-You going to go swimming now?

-Eh, no. No. Or possibly never again.

This calls for a Deadly 60 experiment.

OK.

I'm going to time how long it takes them to devour this piece of steak.

Just imagine if you fell into the water.

How long would it take before the candiru started attacking you?

They are possibly the most grotesque,

the most frightening fish I think I've ever seen.

And no sooner have I put this bit of meat into the water,

then all of a sudden it's... Ow!

Ha-ha! Suddenly surrounded by seething, white, grotesque catfish.

Look at... They're shredding it! They are absolutely shredding it.

They just get a grip with those teeth and then spin their body

round and round and round and bore into it,

like some insane living drill bit.

Dudu reckons that they'll actually do this to a living animal

swimming these waters at night.

That is grim.

Argh!

Can I take piranhas off the Deadly 60 and put candiru on instead?

-Yeah.

-I wasn't planning on it,

but I have to say that's one of the scariest fish I've ever seen.

Oh, ho-ho!

Look at that.

From steak to nothing... in 48 seconds.

I'm certainly not going swimming in there.

They are evil.

One of the most gruesome animals on the list,

they drill a hole through their prey

and can strip fish or meat right down to the bone

in a matter of minutes.

They're absolutely horrifying.

They're the giant candiru.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd