Fight of the century
I wonder what'll happen in a rumble between these fishies and some pike or Zander?
Experts fear Britain could be facing a deadly invasion of killer piranha after a Kent angler hooked one of the Amazonian fang-fish in a Folkestone pond - thousands of miles from its natural habitat where gangs of them regularly strip the flesh from their victims in a terrifying frenzy of teeth and foaming water. The poster …
But what kind of Piranha where they?
Many are primarily vegetarian believe it or not, meat is a bonus but not their main food stuff. If the ones in the tank had been of the more aggressive carnivorous variety it may have had a different outcome.
One thing about Piranha, they are great in a chowder. Also believed by some locals of the Amazon to have "enhancing" effects.
I'll have a pint and a bowl of chowder please.
Pirhana's are not that dangerous,only when the water level drops significantly in mid-summer. They get concentrated in pools and then they are dangerous.
Saying that, my mate comes from Pirhana land, and they kill a deer / cow / horse down river before they do mass crossings with their farm animals. Else there animals get eaten.
Mind you, I used to keep pirhanas and we'd play a drunken party game "Who can keep the bloodied finger in the tank longest". I still have the scar.
Perhaps Ms. Bee was thinking in non-angling terms for a few moments, and inadvertently (or even intentionally!!) thought of a double-entendre connected with a phrase in the article.
I guess we can only hope that readers of El Reg don't catch this awful habit from her. Even the staff could, if this type of thing goes unchecked, become habituated and eventually addicted.
I agree with your point about people discarding unwanted pets being fuckstains but the part about piranhas not killing people is not entirely true.
Piranhas will attack anything large in shoals, be it a fish, aquatic mammal or a careless human and these attacks are quite often fatal. Piranhas and sharks don't *actively* seek out humans, by, say, jumping on the Number 23 to Swindon kicking your front door in and devouring your family. They are opportunistic predators but predators none-the-less.
.. they just eat them. That they die in the process is just an unfortunate side effect :-)
Just kidding. One piranha is unlikely to be up to a complete cow or human anyway, it takes a school to do a decent, movie-compatible job. And with the current state of schools I can't see that happen.
"it generally feeds on insects, worms and other fish"
"Yes, yes. I bet you've got something terrifically funny to say about that. Please do share it with the class."
What ... are you suggesting that there is something else that smells like tuna?
At last, something that might beat the Rampant Rabbit ... but strictly a one time experience, of course.
of the time an aquarium (shop) went bust in St. Helens (Merseyside) and the guy dumped all his tropical fish in the "Hotties" (part of the Leeds / Liverpool canal that ran past the hot water outlet from the Pilkington glass works)
This made for some very exciting angling when I were a lad, a large variety of exotic fishies providing lots of almighty tugs on my rod down by that canal
We can boast about dangerous flora and fauna in the English countryside! Before all you could say when talking to Johnny Foreigner was that we had some rather dubious sightings of what might have been a large black cat but could have well been a large dog. Or maybe you could have mentioned the rather pathetic adder... they can give a right nasty nip you know? And lastly there's hedgehogs (very nasty to stand on one), irate badgers, and, of course, the fearsome miffed squirrel.
this will have been released by some idiot who didn't want his pet fish any more - there's probably only one anyway
regardless of how many there are, they'll all be dead by this time next year as they are tropical fish from the Amazon basin - they won't survive winter in the UK
as a fish keeper i'm pretty surprised it survived being chucked in the lake in the first place to be honest, you're meant to acclimate them gradually to get them used to even small variations in ph, nitrate levels etc.. chucking a bucket of tropical tank water into an english river wouldn't leave many survivors one would think.
unless they are unusually hardy fish i guess, anyone here keep any?
"where gangs of them regularly strip the flesh from their victims in a terrifying frenzy of teeth and foaming water"
I hope that's Sun hyperbole and you don't believe EVERYTHING you read.
Bizarrely enough, the 'frenzy' myth started with Theodore Roosevelt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirhana#Theodore_Roosevelt.27s_description
Fishermen huh!!! I'd be highly surprised if a single Pirhana could have taken his arm off lest it be on big mutant of a motherf**ing fish. OK, yes, maybe he could have gotten a fairly deep cut from the teeth, but the real threat of the Pirhana comes when there is a school of them... and only then that they are all hungry.
Incidentally, I had a nice tug on my rod last night ;-)
you had to go there, din't you? Couldn't leave it at cow-munching pirhanas. Oh, no. Let's talk about tube-steak crawlers as well. Gah, now what am I gonna do after the next pint? It won't work now, thinking about little fishies crawling where no fishies should ever go. Where NOTHING should ever go...
We have our own native nasties:-
Lesser Weever (Echiichthys vipera) and Greater Weever (Trachinus draco) . They inhabit sandy beaches around the UK where they lay half buried waiting for prey. Unfortunately they also get trodden on by bathers who are impaled on their venomous dorsal spines.
The Lesser Weever is the more venomous of the two.
Some years ago I saw someone "stung" in the hand by one of these. I was fishing off a local pier when a tourist's kid caught one. A local recognised it immediately (as did I) and told the lads father to cut his line. The muppet refused to believe something that venomous lived in UK waters and tried to unhook it, his hand only protected by a piece of rag. Needless to say the Weever's spines easily penetrated the rag, and his hand.
First there was an "ouch", followed by a few expletives which, as the venom took effect, escalated into screams of agony and blubbering.....
Yes, they really are that bad.
I met a bloke once who told me a bucket of pirhana fish were discarded, presumably by a pet owner unable to afford his butcher's bills, just downstream of the power station condenser outlet on the river Severn at Ironbridge once. The water there was so warm they loved it. In order to kill them off they had to turn off the power station for a few days.
...should they survive and breed (I know there is not much of a chance, but stranger things already happened), they could really seriously damage the whole ecosystem.Remember when this kind of fish ...can´t figure out the name...was introduced on purpose to Lake Victoria, effectively wiping out pretty much everything that lived in it and around it? Just saying. Whether they are rabbits, or tilapias, animals generally should stay where they belong.
In case he's reading this. Chop up some tomatoes and a couple of shallots. Put some butter in a pan, let it melt over low heat and make a bed with half of the tomatoes and shallots. Place the cleaned piranha on the bed add salt, pepper and a bit of parsley then cover with the remaining tomato/shallot mixture. Add a few oz. Pinot Gris, cover until fish is done. Remove piranha from pan and reduce remaining mixture. Pour reduction on plate, top with piranha, serve with yu choy and rice with sweet potato.
"The other fishermen were yelling, 'You've caught a piranha'. I couldn't believe it. Luckily, the fishing hook had fallen out of its mouth otherwise I would had somehow had to remove it myself."
Or, you could have clubbed it with a tire iron until it quit moving, or you could have written off the fishing hook as a loss--is any population on earth that strapped for metal artifacts these days?
As for the pond, good luck. A few years ago, I saw Maryland authorities pumping out a pond in search of a snakehead. Don't know that the found that one, do know that there are now snakeheads in the Potomac.