Sep 25, 2010

Fish with Teeth!


First fish with feet, now fish with human teeth! What's going on?

Nothing, actually, except that this fish was in a place that it shouldn't be. Caught by a man in South Carolina, this is a pacu, a relative of the piranha, and it's native to the Amazon. But they're sold in the pet trade, and when they get too big, irresponsible people let them go in local waters. Then, periodically, a fisherman catches one and there's a big kerfuffle of "baffled wildlife experts" - or at least baffled local journalists - until someone says, oh yeah, that's just another pacu.

Here's an even better picture of the teeth:

That's from National Geographic, and don't click on that link unless you want to see a picture of a fish with much scarier dentition. I'll take a fish with human teeth over a fish with two inch fangs any day.

Keeping my fingers out of the water either way,
-Wombat (No Relation)

10 comments:

Jan said...

Lordy, now that is ugly to be sure!

thanh n said...

It's sad how people just throw them back in the rivers. They seem like such amiable fishes on youtube.

laurak/ForestWalkArt :) said...

those teeth look just a little TOO human!

April Lorier said...

Can we say this poor fish needs a good tooth cleaning? Any volunteer dentists out there? :-D

wombat said...

Yeah, I looked at a lot of photos and what they all had in common is that these guys need to brush more often.

Vernon said...

That is so strange. When I first saw the top image loading I thought it was a still born donkey or something - you just don't think fish with teeth like that.

Anonymous said...

But human teeth look creepier than two inch fangs on a fish!

Anonymous said...

I wish people took fish keeping more seriously like any other pet.
I am a fish keeping enthusiast and hearing about people throwing unwanted fish in to local waters just really upsets me.
NM what it does to the native wildlife.

Carly said...

that fish must have a dentist because his teeth are pretty freaking straight!

Bianca Jackson said...

OMG, that fish has dental implants! I saw one of those on an exhibit in Las Vegas and it creeped me out! There's even a fish with human lips; I remember it's called Trigger fish!