This is somthing known to fish keepers for years. Red bellies are actually very timid animals. Black piranhas are the ones to fear. They are aggressive, and can grow up to two feet.

"Black piranhas are the ones to fear. They are aggressive, and can grow up to two feet."

So they can walk out of the river and get you anyway... The one-legged ones you should be able to get away from, though...

>>"Black piranhas are the ones to fear. They are aggressive, and can grow up to two feet."

So they can chase you on land as well? - that's scary.

So Black piranhas have one or two feet (or potentially some fractional number)? How fast do they move, and how far from the river can they get before drying out?

Presumably keeping them in tanks is safe as they don't have hands to help them scale the tank walls :-)

Tell that to the mum who lost parts of her hand when she tried to hand feed her son's 'goldfish'....

:-)

Presumably keeping them in tanks is safe as they don't have hands to help them scale the tank walls :-)

or from driving the buggas

They cant bite, but do a very good round house.

I realy should read what I post rather than just letting M$ check my spelling.

Thank you to all you pedants! :-)

... it wasn't your spelling, just your sentence construction.

Serrasalmus nattereri, or the red bellied piranha, is "supposed" to only be able to live in warm water and only grow to 11" long. I did a brief study in 1985 that concluded that the normal habitat, the southern Amazon basin, freezes solid 2 months out of the year with no adverse effects on the local piranha population. This significantly increases the breeding ground and sustainable environments for them.

There is also video and pictorial evidence of 20-25" long specimens and historical record from the Theodore Roosevelt expedition of Piranha biting through 1.5" heat treated steel meat hooks.

Maybe YOU want to go swimming with those poor scared little boogers but I won't go near water with Serrasalmus nattereri.

Heres the problem with that though.The waters that "could" support them year around is anything south of the southern border of North Dakota in the US. There are many news stories regularly reporting that piranha are being caught in American freshwater lakes and rivers.

The story that lead to my brief investigation was a single paragraph story of a 12yr old boy catching a piranha in the river that runs through downtown Kansas City, MO during the first week of December with ice chunks floating by.

http://www.angelfire.com/art/fishbrothers/species3.html

http://www.sysf.physto.se/~klere/piranha/

As an aside, at one time I had a "school" of 50 silver dollar sized Serrasalmus nattereri in a 500 gallon tank at one time. They would devour ANYTHING I put in the tank with them. Crawdads, turtles, bass, bluegill, etc. The "school" slowly dwindled down to a single, 12" fish I named "Holmes" who died in a power outage the winter of 1985.

What? The little buggers drive tanks now?

Rather than chewing on the hand a native left hanging over the side of his dugout canoe, they drive over land, crushing man & beast, and immolating complete towns using battle tanks?

Fearsome stuff...

Maybe President Lula is training them to invade Texas?