When I was a kid, the movie “Piranha” fascinated and scared me. They got into American lakes and used their razor teeth to quickly eat swimmers and leave nothing but a skeleton within seconds. They were the ninjas of the fish kingdom. Then, as I got older I learned that people have them as pets and they really aren’t the crazy man eaters the movie made them out to be.
Or are they?
Recently, at least 8 people at a resort got sent to the hospital in Brazil after a school of piranha attacked them. The people had been wading through a stream. They walked out with bloody legs. However, and expert says that piranhas probably weren’t trying to eat the humans. Tourists regularly toss food in for the fish to eat. They got a little confused.
Not that piranhas don’t go after people. They have been known to bite off the occasional toe. Just last year, a school attacked and killed four swimmers in Paraguay. Luckily, I can provide you with instructions to survive a piranha attack in the video below.