Piranhas: should a person be afraid of them? Piranhas are the most predatory fish

These fish have long had a bad reputation. It is considered to be rightful. They are eager to kill and greedy for blood. Their appetite is insatiable; a school of piranhas quickly gnaws at the carcass of a pig or sheep, deftly tearing the meat from the bones.

However, not all types of piranha are so scary. Some of them are harmless. How can you find out what awaits you? muddy water rivers? Indians have their own signs.

The victim had no chance. As soon as the trout and the pool where the piranhas splashed were released, flocks of enemies rushed at it. Not even a second passed before one of the fish plucked the trout from the side whole piece. This was the signal. Incited by the hunting instinct, six other piranhas began to tear new pieces out of the trout's body.

Her stomach was already torn to pieces. She jerked, trying to dodge, but another squad of killers - there were now about twenty of them - grabbed the fugitive. A cloud of blood mixed with scraps of entrails spread in the water. The trout were no longer visible, and the angry predators were still scurrying around in the muddy water, poking their noses and the invisible outline of the fish.

Suddenly, after about half a minute, the darkness passed. The piranhas have calmed down. The thirst to kill subsided. Their movements slowed. There was no trace left of the trout, a fish 30 cm long.

Common piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri)

Classics of the genre: vampire and piranha

If you have ever seen a piranha hunt in a movie, you will never forget this nightmarish scene. At the mere sight of it, ancient fears are resurrected in a person’s soul. Scraps of old legends swirl in my memory: “It happened on the Rio Negro. Or on Rio San Francisco, Xinga, Araguaia... My father fell into the water..."

From Alfred Brehm to Igor Akimushkin, books about animals are replete with stories about bloodthirsty piranhas. “Very often a crocodile takes flight in front of a wild school of these fish... Often these fish overpower even a bull or tapir... Dobritzhofer says that two Spanish soldiers... were attacked and torn to pieces” (A Brehm). These messages have become “classics of the genre.” Every high school student now knew that the rivers of Brazil were teeming with killer fish.

Over time, schools of fish swam from books and articles into cinema halls. Among the horror films made about Amazonian predators, we can mention the films “Piranha” (1978) directed by Joe Dante and “Piranha 2” (1981) directed by James Cameron.

Their plots are similar. Located on the shore of a picturesque lake military base. Piranhas are grown there. By chance, predators fall into the waters of the lake and begin to eat tourists. And in general, the same “Jaws”, only smaller in size and more in number.

Her name alone makes fans of these films shiver. And hardly any of the experts creepy stories, once in Brazil, he will risk going into the waters of the river if he finds out that piranhas are found there.

The first reports about them began to arrive when the conquistadors reached Brazil and went deep into the wilds of the forests. These messages made my blood run cold.

“The Indians, wounded by cannonballs and musket bullets, fell screaming from their canoes into the river, and ferocious piranhas gnawed them to the bones,” wrote a certain Spanish monk who accompanied the gold and adventure seeker Gonzalo Pizarro in 1553 during a predatory campaign and the lower reaches of the river. Amazons. (Horrified by the cruelty of the fish, the pious monk did not think that the Spaniards, who fired cannons at the Indians, were no more merciful than piranhas.)

Since then, the reputation of these fish has been justifiably fearsome. They smelled the smell of blood better than sharks. Here is what the German traveler Karl-Ferdinand Appun wrote in 1859 when he visited Guyana: “Intending to take a bath, I had just immersed my body in the warm waters of the river, when I jumped out headlong and retreated to the shore, because I felt a piranha bite on my thigh - just where there was a wound from a mosquito bite, scratched by me until it bled.”

Reading such confessions, at some point you catch yourself thinking that piranhas are fiends of hell, who escaped from there through an oversight and are now tyrannizing people and animals. There are no more terrible creatures in the world than them. An awkward step into the water - and dozens of razor-sharp teeth dig into your leg. Good God! One skeleton remains... Is all this really true?

Golden mean: flooded forest and great dry land

“It would be naive to demonize piranhas,” writes German zoologist Wolfgang Schulte, author of the recently published book Piranhas. He has been studying these tropical predators for about 30 years and, like no one else, knows their two-faced essence: “But it would also be naive to portray them as harmless fish, not at all dangerous to humans. The truth lies in the middle."

Over 30 species of piranha live in South America. They feed mainly on small fish, shrimp, carrion and insects.

Only a few piranhas attack warm-blooded animals: among them, for example, red and black piranhas. But these fish are quick to kill. If a young heron, having fallen out of the nest, awkwardly plops into the water, “she is surrounded by a flock of piranhas,” writes V. Schulte, “and seconds later only feathers float on the water.”

Piranhas have lunch in an aquarium

He had seen similar scenes himself, although it is not easy to thoroughly understand river battles. Even experts have difficulty distinguishing between individual types of piranhas, since the color of the fish changes dramatically with age.

However, the most aggressive piranhas usually feed only on carrion. “They rarely attack living mammals or people. As a rule, this happens during the dry season, when the habitat of fish is sharply narrowed and there is not enough prey. They also attack individuals with bleeding wounds,” explains Schulte. If the attack is successful and blood spurts out from the victim, all the piranhas scurrying nearby rush to her.

So, the aggressiveness of piranhas depends on the time of year. During the rainy season, the Amazon and Orinoco flood. The water level in them rises by about 15 meters. Rivers flood a vast area. Where the forest recently grew, boats float, and the rower, lowering a pole into the water, can reach the crown of the tree. Where the birds sang, the fish are silent.

Flooded forests become a breadbasket for piranhas. They have a great selection of food. The local Indians know this and, fearing nothing, climb into the water. Even children splash in the river, dispersing schools of piranhas.

Piranhas have sharp teeth

Indian children swim in the Orinoco River, infested with piranhas

Water skiers carelessly ride along the Orinoco fairway, teeming with “killer fish.” Guides carrying tourists on boats without hesitation jump into the water, and right under their feet tourists catch piranhas with fishing rods.

Miracles and nothing more! Predators behave more modestly than trained lions. It’s just that circus lions sometimes develop an appetite.

Piranhas change their character when there is great dryness. Then the rivers turn into streams. Their level drops sharply. “Lagoons” are visible everywhere - lakes and even puddles in which fish, caimans and river dolphins who became prisoners. Piranhas, cut off from the river, do not have enough food - they fuss and rush about.

Now they are ready to bite anything that moves. Any living creature that gets into their pond is immediately attacked. As soon as a cow or horse puts its face into the lake to drink, angry fish grab its lips and tear out the meat in pieces. Often piranhas even kill each other.

“During a drought, not a single local resident would risk swimming in such a reservoir,” writes Wolfgang Schulte.

Skeleton in the waves of memory: fisherman and river

Harald Schulz, one of the best experts on the Amazon, wrote that during his 20 years in South America, he knew of only seven people who were bitten by piranhas, and only one was seriously injured. It was Schultz, who lived among the Indians for a long time, who came up with a joke at one time, ridiculing the fears of Europeans, for whom death hides at every turn in the Amazon forests.

Until now, this anecdote wanders from one publication to another, often taken on faith.

“My father was about 15 years old at the time. The Indians were chasing him, and he, running away from them, jumped into a canoe, but the boat was flimsy. She capsized and he had to swim. He jumped out onto the shore, but bad luck: he looked, but only a skeleton was left of him. But nothing else terrible happened to him.”

Most often, the victims of piranhas are fishermen, who hunt them themselves. After all, in Brazil, piranhas are considered a delicacy. Catching them is easy: you just need to throw a hook tied to a wire into the water (the piranha will bite through ordinary fishing line) and twitch it, imitating the fluttering of the victim.

A fish the size of a palm hangs on a hook right there. If a fisherman attacks a school of piranhas, then just know that you have time to throw the hook: every minute you can pull out a fish.

In the excitement of the hunt, it’s easy to turn into a victim yourself. A piranha thrown out of the water wriggles wildly and grabs the air with its teeth. Taking it off the hook can cause you to lose a finger. Even seemingly dead piranhas are dangerous: the fish seems to have stopped moving, but if you touch its teeth, its mouth will reflexively tighten, like a trap.

Red pacu (Piaractus brachypomus) herbivorous piranha

How many adventurers who reached the shores of the Amazon or its tributaries lost their fingers in the old days only because they decided to catch fish for their dinner. This is how legends were born.

Indeed, what does a piranha opponent look like at first glance? The fish seems inconspicuous and even dull. Her weapon is “sheathed,” but as soon as she opens her mouth, the impression changes. The piranha's mouth is lined with triangular, razor-sharp teeth that resemble daggers. They are positioned so that they snap together like a zipper on your clothing.

The hunting style inherent in piranhas is also unusual (by the way, sharks behave similarly): having stumbled upon a prey, it instantly rushes at it and cuts off a piece of meat; Having swallowed it, it immediately digs into the body again. In a similar way, the piranha attacks any prey.

Metynnis luna piranha (Metynnis luna Soret)

Flag piranha (Catoprion mento)

However, sometimes the piranha itself ends up in someone else's mouth. In the rivers of America she has many enemies: large predatory fish, caimans, herons, river dolphins and freshwater turtles matamata, which are also dangerous to humans. All of them, before swallowing a piranha, try to bite it as hard as possible to check whether it is still alive.

“Swallowing a live piranha is like putting a running circular saw into your stomach,” notes American journalist Roy Sasser. The piranha is not the prophet Jonah, ready to rest patiently in the belly of the whale: it begins to bite and can kill the predator that caught it.

As already mentioned, the piranha has a superbly developed sense of smell - it smells blood in the water from afar. As soon as you throw bloody bait into the water, piranhas swim from all over the river. However, we must not forget that the inhabitants of the Amazon and its tributaries can only rely on their sense of smell. The water in these rivers is so muddy that you can’t see anything ten centimeters away. All that remains is to sniff or listen for prey. The sharper the sense of smell, the higher the chances of survival.

Piranha's hearing is also excellent. The wounded fish flounder desperately, generating high frequency waves. Piranhas catch them and swim to the source of this sound.

However, piranhas cannot be called “voracious killers,” as was long believed. English zoologist Richard Fox placed 25 goldfish in a pool where two piranhas were swimming. He expected that the predators would soon kill all the victims, like wolves entering a sheepfold.

However, the piranhas killed only one goldfish per day between them, dividing it in half like brothers. They did not deal with their victims in vain, but killed only to eat.

However, they also did not want to miss out on rich prey - a flock of golden fish. Therefore, on the very first day, the piranhas bit off their fins. Now the helpless fish, unable to swim on their own, swayed in the water like floats - tail up, head down. They were a living food supply for the hunters. Day after day they chose a new victim and, without haste, ate it.

Amazonian “wolves” are friends of the Indians

In their homeland, these predators are real river orderlies (remember that wolves are also called forest orderlies). When rivers overflow during the rainy season and entire areas of forest are hidden under water, many animals do not have time to escape. Thousands of corpses roll on the waves, threatening to poison all living things around with their poison and cause an epidemic. If it were not for the agility of the piranhas, which eat these carcasses white to the bone, then people would die from seasonal epidemics in Brazil.

And not only seasonal ones! Twice a month, on the new moon and full moon, a particularly strong (“spring”) tide begins: the waters of the Atlantic rush deep into the continent, rushing up the river beds. The Amazon begins to flow backwards, spilling over its banks.

If you consider that every second the Amazon dumps up to 200 thousand cubic meters of water into the ocean, you can easily imagine what a wall of water is rolling backwards. The river overflows for kilometers.

The consequences of these regular floods are felt even 700 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon. Small animals die from them again and again. Piranhas, like kites, clear the entire area of carrion, which would otherwise rot for a long time in the water. In addition, piranhas exterminate wounded and sick animals, healing the populations of their victims.

The pacu fish, a close relative of the piranha, is completely vegetarian - it is not a forest orderly, but a real forester. With its powerful jaws, it crushes nuts, helping their kernels to spill into the soil. Swimming through the flooded forest, she eats fruits, and then, far from the place of her meal, she spews out seeds, dispersing them, as birds do.

Learning the habits of piranhas, one can only remember with bitterness that at one time the authorities of Brazil, falling under the terrible spell of legends, tried to put an end to these fish once and for all and poisoned them with various poisons, simultaneously exterminating other inhabitants of the rivers.

Well, in the 20th century, man experienced the “dizziness of progress.” Without any hesitation, we tried to establish balance in nature in our own way, destroying natural mechanisms and suffering from the consequences every time.

Natives South America They have long learned to get along with piranhas and even made them their helpers. Many Indian tribes living along the banks of the Amazon do not bother digging graves to bury their relatives during the rainy season. They lower the dead body into the water, and the piranhas, born gravediggers, will leave a little of the deceased.

The Guarani Indians wrap the deceased in a net with large mesh and hang it over the side of the boat, waiting until the fish scrape off all the flesh. Then they decorate the skeleton with feathers and hide (“bury”) with honor in one of the huts.

Black-sided piranha (Serrasalmus humeralis)

Since time immemorial, piranha jaws have replaced scissors for Indians. When making arrows poisoned with curare poison, the Indians cut their tips with the teeth of piranhas. In the wound of the victim, such an arrow broke off, all the more likely to poison it.

There are many legends about piranhas. Villages and rivers in Brazil are named after them. In the cities, “piranhas” are the name given to girls of easy virtue who are ready to rob their prey completely.

Nowadays, piranhas have also begun to be found in the reservoirs of Europe and America. I remember that some tabloid newspapers reported about the appearance of “killer fish” in the Moscow region. It's all about exotic lovers who, having started unusual fish, may, having had enough of the “toy”, throw them directly into a nearby pond or sewer drain.

However, there is no need to panic. The fate of piranhas in our climate is unenviable. These heat-loving animals quickly begin to get sick and die, and they will not survive the winter in open waters. And they don't look like serial killers, as we have seen.

The reputation of this fish is hopelessly spoiled by cinema. Horrible stories tell of her fantastic bloodthirstiness. They say that a school of these fish can kill a buffalo carcass in the blink of an eye. What can we say about a person? But it is human nature to tickle one's nerves. He is not afraid that in the local dialect “piranha” means “ angry fish" And now a man is already breeding a ferocious inhabitant of the waters of the Amazon in his home aquarium.

Piranha has joined the ranks aquarium fish in the middle of the 20th century. And they settled in well. To her niche of the most predatory freshwater fish no one has attempted yet.

Characteristics of piranha

Piranha belongs to the Characionidae family, the order of Carp-toothed. Lives in fresh waters South America. It has many species and subspecies, the most common and famous of which is the common piranha, also known as the red-bellied piranha.

Piranha is quite rare and expensive aquarium fish, and therefore experts do not advise buying this predatory exotic in subway passages. Preference is given to specialized stores and trusted aquarists.

When purchasing even a completely healthy-looking individual, it will have to be placed in a quarantine aquarium for a week. Only after this, if the fish does not show any alarming symptoms, can it be transferred to permanent place residence.

Important! When choosing a fish to buy, you should observe its behavior, check appearance to check for the absence of unusual bumps and bulges on the body, ulcers, sticky, cloudy plaque, and damage to the scales. A fish must have an appetite, especially one as voracious as a piranha. Be active and have no coordination problems.

Therefore, in order to really assess the situation with the condition of the purchase, the acquisition process must be accompanied by pickup. When delivering by courier, it is impossible to assess the health of the pet or see the conditions of its detention at the point of sale.

The cost of piranha depends on the type and age. Usually, one individual costs 1,500 - 3,000 rubles. Only very rare specimens are more expensive. In these cases, the price can reach several thousand rubles for very young fish.

Aquarium setup, equipment

To successfully keep a piranha, you need to take it into account biological features and, according to them, provide her with comfortable living conditions.

Spacious aquarium.
The volume is calculated based on the norm - 10 liters of water for every 3 cm of fish body length. It turns out that two individuals will need a 150-liter aquarium, and a flock of 5-8 young piranhas will need a 200-liter aquarium. For adult company An aquarium of 300-500 liters is already desirable.
This is not a whim or a luxury, but an urgent necessity caused by the aggressive nature of this fish. The smaller the piranha is, the angrier it is.
A large number of shelters.
For all its aggressiveness, piranha is a timid fish. She needs hidden places - snags, houses, caves, stones, where she can hide in case of imaginary or real danger.
The aquarium also needs plants – live or artificial. They are usually planted densely and along the entire perimeter.
Shelters and plants occupy 2/3 of the total volume of the piranha aquarium.
Powerful filter.
Due to its gluttony, piranha produces a lot of waste. To prevent them from accumulating in the water and poisoning it, you need a powerful cleaning filter.
Good compressor.
For comfortable well-being, piranha is necessary clean water saturated with oxygen. You can't do without a reliable compressor.
Water heater and thermometer.
Piranha - resident warm countries And warm waters. She is comfortable only when the water has a temperature of at least 23 degrees. If you want this fish to think about procreation, then the temperature needs to be made even warmer - 26 degrees.

What to feed a piranha

Piranhas are unpretentious in food, but this does not mean that they can be fed with anything. It has its own rules and restrictions. To begin with, you need to decide what kind of piranha you have - carnivorous or vegetarian.

For feeding, you need to allocate a small open area in the aquarium. And strictly follow the feeding regimen - once a day, for two minutes. If the food has not been snapped up during this time, the remains should be immediately removed from the aquarium. This is done in order to prevent water pollution, because the piranha has a well-known feature: it does not pick up food from the bottom of the aquarium.

This is interesting! Piranha ignores food that is too small. Its size should be proportionate to their jaws.

Piranhas love variety. To provide it to them, they will have to stock up different types feed: shallow sea fish, small shrimp, squid meat, earthworms, bloodworms, tadpoles, frogs, fresh vegetables - zucchini, potatoes, spinach, carrots.

As for the meat of mammals, due to its omnivorous nature, the piranha will eat it, but experts do not recommend using this type of food for three reasons.

An abundance of meat in the diet leads to fish obesity.
Digestion is disrupted and the color of the fish is lost.
The water in the aquarium becomes polluted.

A healthy piranha has a good appetite. She eats food equal to her own weight per day.

From time to time - 2-4 times a month, the carnivorous piranha needs to have fasting days - vegetable ones, so that it does not become fat.

This is interesting! Dry food for piranhas saves time and has proven itself well. They have a balanced composition and contain the vitamins and minerals necessary for fish.

Care and hygiene, precautions

Piranhas are easy to care for. But there are 3 things that an aquarist will have to do regularly if he wants his predators to be healthy and happy.

Keep the water clean.
- To do this, once a week 10% of the water in the aquarium is replaced. Water changes are carried out smoothly to prevent sudden changes in the living conditions of the fish. Otherwise, bloodthirsty predators may become stressed.
Monitor the composition of the water.
- Regular water tests are necessary. The ammonia content of the water is measured 1-2 times a week. The acidity level should be 6 - 7, hardness - 6-15.
Monitor the water temperature.
- Long stay cold water can kill a piranha. Its water temperature is 25-27 degrees.

There is one more condition that is vital for a piranha - company. This is a schooling fish. She doesn't feel good being alone. Without a flock, she becomes overly shy and develops poorly.

Important! Experts advise starting to populate the aquarium with 3-5 fish of the same age and size - so that the large ones do not eat the small ones, mistaking them for food.

Despite the simple rules for caring for and keeping piranhas, we should not forget that they are predators. Moreover, they are the most ferocious and bloodthirsty of freshwater fish living on Earth.

There are 4 important precautions when keeping piranhas at home

You should not place an aquarium with piranhas low, especially if there are small children in the house.
When manipulating the aquarium with bare hands, it is important that there are no wounds or cuts on the skin.
You can't drive a school of piranhas into a corner. This provokes them to aggression.
Piranhas are most aggressive and dangerous during spawning. During this period, you should act with extreme caution, using soft wire nets with long handles.

Piranhas inhabit the rivers of South America. Their habitat extends over tens of millions of square kilometers - from eastern borders the Andes mountain range to the very Atlantic coast. Piranhas inhabit the waters of Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. There are more than twenty species of piranhas. Some species grow up to half a meter in length, others remain very small, a few centimeters long.

Contrary to popular belief, most species of piranha are harmless. Only four species of these fish are aggressive and can pose a danger. There is plenty of evidence of piranha attacks, but none of these cases resulted in fatal consequences.

The word "" from one of the South American Indian tribes means "tooth fish." This is a capacious characteristic of the fish, the teeth are exposed due to special structure lower jaw. The muscles that control jaw movements are very strong. In fact, piranhas do not tear their prey apart, but cut off small pieces of meat. Piranhas have extremely sharp teeth. It is believed that they can even damage metal.

Piranhas are cannibals. They can easily attack their wounded relatives.

Common myths about piranhas

Contrary to the imposed stereotype, adult piranhas do not form large schools. In New York, where piranhas were bred, these fish kept a considerable distance from each other. However, during feeding, they attacked the prey in a dense group. After finishing feeding, they restored their usual distance. Moreover, the density of fish exceeded a certain permissible value, and the piranhas began to fight among themselves.

It is unknown exactly how piranhas sense prey. Perhaps they are guided by the movements that their victims make. Scientists have suggested that piranhas may respond to changes in water levels.

Piranhas are quite popular for breeding in aquariums. However, in most countries they are prohibited. Many piranha owners release these fish into natural bodies of water as a joke; as a result, news often appears in the press about piranhas caught either in the Volga or in the Vistula. Fortunately, harsh winters do not allow these fish to adapt to cold rivers. So their main habitat remains the Amazon.

Piranha is known for its aggressiveness, so its danger to humans is not in doubt. A school of these fish is capable of, without exaggeration, leaving only a skeleton of its prey in a few seconds. Thanks to its teeth, the fish can easily grab onto any prey and tear off a piece of it. Every year, approximately 80 people suffer from piranha bites, despite the fact that only a few of them hunt warm-blooded mammals, in particular the “red” and “black” ones.

The wounds left by piranha teeth are always serious and never fully heal. Many are left without body parts - a finger or a hand. But, in fact, to satisfy one fish, up to 50 grams of meat is enough. According to recent studies, their aggressiveness is also exaggerated. They do not attack everything that comes their way. Their period of bloodthirstiness occurs during spawning and dry periods. In other cases, this fish is unusually cowardly, and would prefer to swim away from danger rather than fight it. So, during the rainy season, when the water level rises by 15 meters and the flooded forests become a real feast for piranhas, local residents calmly climb into the water. Unless, of course, they have a bleeding wound. To date, there has not been a single recorded case of a piranha eating a person.

In means mass media For several years now, reports have been appearing about the presence of the legendary South American river predator in Russian waters. Is there any reason to sound the alarm?

Everyone without exception knows what a piranha is. This river fish, living mainly in the warm fresh waters of South America. Fish refers to predatory species, however, there is also a herbivorous piranha.

From all over Russia, reports of the appearance of piranhas in rivers, lakes and reservoirs are reported. There are several known cases of attacks on people. The most interesting thing is that the official authorities admit that “some individuals” may end up in Russian reservoirs, but declare the complete impossibility of their reproduction and distribution.

Piranha is extremely adaptable. There are known cases when herbivorous subspecies of this fish switched to a predatory lifestyle and vice versa. Officials say that reproduction of this species in Russia is impossible due to the cold climate (according to official data, the fish spawns at a water temperature of 28 o C).

However, scientists insist that the main factor for reproduction is the availability of food supply. And since in domestic reservoirs natural enemy Piranha simply cannot have it, it has every chance of becoming an invasive species.

How does this fish get into our waters? It's hard to speculate here. The most plausible version is that the fish were “released” from aquariums. Once in the river, individuals quickly adapt and begin to reproduce. As the population increases exponentially, the most exciting developments lie ahead. Russian fishermen have every chance to soon enjoy this rather tasty fish.