6 myths about piranhas that are long overdue to be debunked

Myth 1. Piranhas devour their prey alive in seconds

In countless horror films, these fish instantly turn their victims into gnawed skeletons. They supposedly can eat a whole bull, and a crocodile, and, of course, a person faster than they blink an eye.

But actually this is not true. Many piranhas indeed arePygocentrus nattereri / ADW predators with extremely sharp teeth, but they definitely cannot devour a whole large and still living prey.

No, of course, they will gnaw at least a bull... If he is already dead, and you give the piranhas a week of time.

The reputation of ferocious monsters that devour prey in a flock, piranhas acquired in 1913 - then the American politician Theodore Roosevelt visited the Amazon basin. Local residents decided to impress the politician by throwing the carcass of a freshly killed cow into a tank with long-starving fish. They began to feed, and the water was stained with blood.

Shocked Roosevelt characterizedT. Roosevelt. Through the Brazilian wilderness in his notes of these fish as real monsters, attributing to them the ability to devour whole bulls on the go.

Naturally, this is a slight exaggeration. Piranhas sometimes gnaw bones and do not disdain carrion, but usually are eatingPiranha-Ferocious Fighter or Scavenging Softie? /AMomentOfScience.com fish, worms, insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and plants.

Myth 2. Piranhas prey on humans

Video: Wikimedia Commons

In reality, scenes with bathers being devoured alive, as in the horror films of Alexander Azh, can not be expected. The maximum that piranhas are capable of - bite your toes when you get too close to them.

One study showedJ. H. Mol. Attacks on humans by the piranha Serrasalmus rhombeus in Suriname / Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environmentthat, for example, on the Wyombo River in South America for 12 years, these fish attacked people 30 times and the injuries were not serious. Not a single death was recorded.

All in all history knownv. Haddad. Piranha attacks on humans in southeast Brazil: epidemiology, natural history, and clinical treatment, with description of a bite outbreak / Wilderness & Environmental Medicine three cases where schools of piranhas actually ate human corpses.

True, the cause of death of these poor fellows was not the teeth of fish, but drowning due to heart failure.

Myth 3. Piranhas are at the top of the food pyramid.

Piranhas are incredibly ferocious creatures that simply do not have natural enemies and easily gnaw even crocodileswho dared to approach their flock.

In fact, the opposite is true: they are regularly are eatingH. Queiroz. safety in numbers? Shoaling behavior of the Amazonian red-bellied piranha / Biology Letters caimans, birds, dolphins, and sometimes other predatory fish. They are not at all the undivided rulers of the Amazon, but are fighting for their existence in it in the same way as other water creatures.

And yes, a person eats piranhas much more often than they eat people. The meat of many of these fish in South America for saleL. Prestes. Proactively averting the collapse of Amazon fisheries based on three migratory flagship species / PLOS ONE in the markets in fresh and frozen form and quite good in taste. Some locals even considerPiranha Recipes From an Extreme Angler | Arts & Culture / Smithsonian Magazinethat predatory piranha soup is an aphrodisiac.

Myth 4. All piranhas are predators

Not at all! Despite their reputation as ferocious flesh eaters, most piranhas are omnivores. When they lack carrion, insects, crustaceans and fish, they begin to absorb algae, plants and seeds.

And some of their species, such as Tometes camunani or Colossoma macropomum, are generally vegetarians: they eatM. C. Andrade. Tometes camunani (Characiformes: Serrasalmidae), a new species of phytophagous fish from the Guiana Shield, rio Trombetas basin, Brazil / SciELO exclusively plant foods.

Myth 5. There is a castrator piranha

By the way, another myth about Colossoma macropomum is that this species is also called brown pacu or tambaki. This fish, as we found out, is herbivorous, its teeth are square, and the jaw resembles a human. With this Hollywood smile, the piranha deftly gnaws nuts and seeds that have fallen into the water, feeding on them.

On the Internet, you can find frightening stories about how tambaku, seeing the scrotum of a naked person floating by, mistook it for a nut and famously cracked it, leaving the unfortunate victim to fight in suffering.

Therefore, the fish even gaveFears pacu piranha-type ‘nutcracker’ fish which eats TESTICLES heading to Britain / Express.co.uk Nickname Nutcracker. That is, the Nutcracker, because in English the word nuts (nuts) is a euphemism for male testicles. Indeed, it is also mythWarning over testicle-biting fish in Denmark? It's all wet / CNN.

Aquarists who keep the fish claim that it can bite. But to do this, you must put your hand directly into the mouth of a shy pet.

And stories about how tambaki bites off men of their dignity, appearedWarning over testicle-biting fish in Denmark? It's all wet / CNN due to an unfortunate witticism by Professor Peter Rask Moller of the Copenhagen Museum. His joke taken at face value and replicated by the media, and later the ichthyologist had to refute his words.

Myth 6. Piranhas are very aggressive and stay in packs to hunt.

Quite the opposite: even predatory species of piranhas are shy and stray into flocks not at all for the sake of hunting, but so that they are not attacked by enemies.

Research showH. Queiroz. safety in numbers? Shoaling behavior of the Amazonian red-bellied piranha / Biology Lettersthat lone piranhas living in an aquarium are stressed, as they are always waiting for a predator to attack. In packs, they feel much more confident.

Apparently, each member of the school expects that some caiman, jumping out of the thicket, will eat one of the comrades, and not himself.