The Piranha's Monstrous Cousin

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Here's something really cool and a bit disturbing. I've recently been hooked (no pun intended) to a fishing show in discovery channel called "River Monsters". Yes for those of you like me who love watching discovery channel, its the one hosted by Jeremy Wade and where he travels around the world led on by fishing stories and folklore and aims to catch the real live monsters behind each story. Now, on to the good part. Taking place in Papua New Guinea, the episode entitled "The Mutilator" is based on stories telling of a monster that seems to have a taste for human flesh, more specifically, male parts (yes, you know what I mean). What makes it all the more interesting is that reports also described the perpetrator as having human-like teeth. This makes it almost too creepy to be true. I could only imagine my fear when entering a mucky river knowing that something down there with human-like teeth is chomping down male parts. Yikes! Wade sets out to capture this yet-to-be-identified monster following the stories of attacks around the village. Fishing along the banks near the village, Wade comes up with a surprising catch, a Red-bellied Pacu (a vegetarian relative of the Piranha). This was surprising in that the Pacu, much like its more famous relative, is native ONLY in the Amazon which is half-way around the world from Papua New Guinea. This led to the conclusion that the Pacu caught in the river was a product of the introduction of a potentially invasive species. The Pacu in Papua New Guinea, with the absence of larger predators, have grown to unimaginable proportions. And because of the lack of the Pacu's staple diet of nuts and hard-berries, they turned carnivorous. If you could imagine a gigantic fish (up to 35inches and 55pounds) with jaws designed for crushing nuts turning carnivorous and taking a chunk out of any part of you, let along your "jewels". Scary right?? And unlike the Piranha which attacks with almost surgically sharp teeth making it rather painless, the Pacu chomps down with flat and almost human-like teeth, originally designed to break the hard shells of nuts, making it an extremely painful experience for its victim. Its just scary to think that a docile creature such as the vegetarian Pacu (which is also a popular aquariums fish) can be turned into a carnivorous monster, capable of attacking full grown men, all with a simple misguided act of human introduction...