Ferocious Fishes: Are Piranhas As Ferocious As You Think?

In the Amazon forest, there is only one goal to survive, kill or be killed. The environment is not friendly and while there are the jaguars of the forest, there are ferocious hunters in the river of the Amazon. Just as it houses land predators, so does it house predator fishes.

The payara is one of the fishes that you find in the Amazon river. Known as the vampire of the Amazon, is a fish that feast on piranhas which are predators themselves. They can be up to 1 meter long but have fangs as long as Carrots and are shielded thanks to the extra space in their skull and a single bite pierces through the heart and the gut of their prey after which they swallow it completely. The payara doesn't live in the regions with low oxygen levels in the water because it hunts using speed and power, where they wait for the current to bring in unsuspecting preys into their mouth.

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While you wonder if the Payara is Amazon’s water killer, wait for the Arapaima which is a fearless predator. The Arapaima can get up to 2 meters long, covered in full scale like an amour and they open their mouth to create a vacuum that helps them suck their prey in. Their scales are made of collagen and calcium phosphate which gives them rigidity and toughness on the outside and while they are flexible on the inside. This fish can live outside water adapting to low oxygen condition and dry rivers and it does so by turning its swim bladder into something similar to lungs. They often come to the surface of water body to breath every now and then even in normal conditions.

You think catfishes can be good predators, then you haven't seen the Piraiba Catfish which can grow up to 3.5 meters in length. They can breath air from the outside helping them to survive for a short period of time. They are night hunters and are very active at night. Their whiskers help them identify preys as it is filled with chemo-receptors and pressure sensors helping them to smell and sense prey.

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Piranha is another misunderstood fish of the Amazon located in the South American Fresh waters. It has a lot of interlocking teeth feeding on insect, crustaceans, worms, and fishes but they are omnivorous so they feed on seeds, and fruits as well. Depending on the type of piranhas, they have specific dietary choices with some feeding on fish scales. Red bellied piranhas the ones depicted as rapacious just like you saw in the movie "The Piranha" but this information isn't true. This type of piranha move in groups and they do not do so for the purpose of predation, rather they do so for the purpose of protection from predators.

Red bellied piranhas attack humans when we disturb them during mating, when they protect their eggs, or cases of starvation causing them to feed on human legs when dipped in water although feeding from starvation is said to be rare but their title for being so ferocious was thanks to president Theodore Roosevelt who in his book published in 1914 said that they could eat an entire cow or human alive but this account is misleading to say at best.