A man in China has inserted a live eel into his anus in the hopes of fixing his constipation, but the extreme measure almost took his life.
The Guangzhou factory worker, named as 49-year-old Mr Liu, rushed to hospital with abdominal pain and a swollen stomach. Doctors soon operated on him and found a 50cm-long eel swimming inside him.
He's the latest in a string of incidents involving men forcing fishy objects into their bowels. One case happened in Auckland, prompting then-3 News reporter David Farrier to get to the bottom of eel breeding in New Zealand, as seen in the video above.
The Guangzhou Daily reported the eel, with a head diameter of 3-5cm, had broken through his intestines and made a mess of his abdominal cavity.
"We asked Mr Liu when we spotted the eel in his stomach, he said the eel went into his anus by mistake. But after the surgery, he told us that he actually put an eel inside his anus himself," Dr Zhao Zhirong told Guangdong Television.
Mr Liu told doctors he was trying a folk remedy which said a live eel could relieve constipation.
- 2010: Man in Sichuan, China, reportedly dies after eel inserted into rectum by drunk friends
- 2011: Doctors remove eel from bladder of Chinese man Zhang Nan, after creature thought to have slithered through penis during spa treatment
- 2012: Auckland man rushes to hospital A&E with eel stuck in his bottom. Auckland DHB staff were disciplined for leaking the x-rays to the media
- 2013: Man in Guangdong, China, hospitalised after inserting 20-inch-long swamp eel into anus
- 2014: Man in Brazil operated on after fish gets stuck in his anus
- March 2017: Man in Guangzhou, China, reportedly operated on after inserting two fish in his anus
- April 2017: Man in Guangzhou tries to fix constipation by inserting eel in anus
Newshub.