Piranhas om nom nom

[onyxsolare]

"There are many tales describing ferocious schools of piranha attacking humans, but there are few scientific data supporting such behavior. The very few documented instances of humans attacked and eaten by piranha schools include 3 that occurred after death by other causes (eg, heart failure and drowning). These predaceous fishes, however, do

Comments

[hollowman]

Ok... so looking at it, unless I am missing something the sciencey part at the bottom doesn't really support the graphic description up top. It looks like the images are included as an example of the "many tales describing ferocious schools of piranha attacking humans", which it then notes there is little evidence for.

I'd bet he'd been in the water awhile, and was probably quite dead when fish started eating him. You'll note one of the fish next to his body is a catfish, which is hardly likely to have taken part in de-fleshing a living man. My guess is the fish there were feeding inside the body cavity of the man, and all got pulled up when he was pulled out of the water - either that or the pictures are entirely misleading. There's something "fishy" (heh!) about the pictures, and even moreso about the description given.

[meradragon]

I looked around and saw this:
"piece of heavy equipment operated by a Brazilian oil company, tumbled into the Amazon upside down, trapping the operator. He apparently broke the glass on his cage but was unable to escape and drowned. Piranhas were attracted by the blood...

The image above shows his forearm after the body was recovered (the articulated hand is folded back over the radius/ulna). The other parts of his body not covered by clothing (skull, neck, and premanubrial area) were similarly defleshed, as were the lungs, heart etc after the thoracic cage was breached."

and someone theorized that whatever he was wearing was covering enough of his upper body that they would start with the face and neck, as opposed to the rest of the body (clothing = pain)

... seemed possible.

[hollowman]

Makes sense. It was the implciation they did that to a living man, trying to get out of the water, that I found most unlikely. Any fish will chew on a drowned man, pirahna or no.

[pikacheeka]

Agreed. I was kind of confused about that myself. As well as the catfish.

[brockulfsen]

Yeah, classic small scavenger damage to a clothed corpse.

Clothing is a remarkably effectve deterrent to most small-medium sized animals.

[iamjackscolon03]

i'm glad you noticed the catfish too...

[misanthropette]

my reaction was:

"oh. i guess piranhas look like catfish.."

[rhodamine]

"I'd bet he'd been in the water awhile"

yeah, the necrosis/"rotting tissue" in the image would make me think that also. that takes time to happen.

[ginasketch]

I thought that too. I thought "He'd at least have to be unconcious for that kind of damage to be inflicted."