An X-ray image of a man who allegedly stuck an eel inside himself, and then went to the doctor because he could not get the fish out, is circulating on entertainment sites and social networks. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.
The viral image shows an X-ray of a person with what appears to be a long, thin creature inside. In RuNet, the accompanying story most often goes like this: “An extreme sports enthusiast inserted a 50-centimeter live eel into his anus, but was unable to pull it out himself. When I arrived at the hospital, the eel was still moving, looking for a way out, but when they took it out, it did not survive... Most likely, because of the shame.” In some publications eel called a snake. In addition, sometimes in the story add details that the idea for such an act came to a man from China after watching porn, and the operation to extract the fish lasted all night.
Posts with an x-ray and a story about an eel were posted on VKontakte - in the public pages "Nice touch"(209,000 views), "Hard" (153,000), "Funny to the point of tears | Women's humor"(80,000), "Not obvious"(47,000), "Notes of Youth"(4700), etc. Often this story, together with the photo in question, ends up in various collections about unusual objects found in the human intestines. Similar materials are available on the websites "Bugaga", "I cried", Fishki.net, Newsland And others.
The origin of the viral X-ray image was discovered several years ago by fact checkers from the Snopes project. How report our foreign colleagues, the picture was connected not only with the story of the eel. “This x-ray shows the case of an unfortunate woman who had a snake crawl into her vagina, crawl through her fallopian tube, and through her ovary into her body cavity. The snake lived inside unnoticed for three days, and then began to eat the woman’s appendix,” claimed social network users.
The version involving a man from China who inserted a live eel into his anus after watching a porn video is also popular outside the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. “He wanted to try something unique. Doctors say the eel was alive when the man was operated on, but died shortly after it was pulled out." wrote on the Bold Sky website in March 2016, accompanied by a viral photo.
There are many reports online of people (often said to be from China) putting live eels inside themselves. For example, a story that went viral on the RuNet appeared in the tabloid The Sun back in 2013. In 2017, the same publication reported about several other cases where eels ended up inside Chinese people. However, none of those materials contained the photograph we were interested in.
Viral X-ray image for the first time appeared no later than June 2002 on the now defunct site Cyberium.net, which is dedicated to unusual digital drawings. Works on this resource were separated by categories with punning names like HumAnimals (from English human - “man”, and animals - “animals”), WoManipulations (from woman - “woman”, and manipulations - “manipulation”), surRealities (sur - “sur”, and realities - “realities”), etc. “The pictures that you will find here are the result of digital manipulations with photographs, trying to capture the reality of the world in which we we live. My goal is to rework their meaning in order to explore another hidden reality - my mind." it was said on Cyberium.net.
In the center on the left edge of the image, which later became viral, is the signature of the author GyP. On the website indicatedthat GyP is the pseudonym of a man named Guido (he also has the nickname Gippo). In the upper left corner is the title of this work - “Original Sin”; accordingly, the image, according to the author’s idea, shows an “X-ray” of not a man and an eel, but a woman and a snake. This is confirmed by the address of the Internet page where the work was posted: www.cyberium.net/imagine/S/woman-snake-1280.jpg (woman - “woman”, snake - “snake”).
Although Guido did not provide additional information about this image on his website, in his FAQ section he told, that he used PaintShop Pro, Photoshop and Power GOO to create the works. In addition, both we and our colleagues from Snopes managed to find the original image with the x-ray of the snake that Guido used.
Thus, although reports of people inserting oblong animals into themselves periodically appear in the tabloids, the viral image has nothing to do with them, even if those statements are true (verifying their veracity was not the purpose of this analysis). The photo in question is actually an artwork that was created with a different idea more than 20 years ago.
Cover photo: GyP
Not true
- Is it true that we managed to photograph a snake that swallowed a Kalashnikov assault rifle?
- Is it true that the photo shows the skeleton of a giant titanoboa snake?
- Is it true that a huge eel was mistaken for the Loch Ness monster?
- Is it true that the remains of a Nazi officer were found in the stomach of a 100-year-old catfish?
- Is it true that scientists have created a 3D model of the biblical Adam who looks like Vin Diesel?
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