Piranha Piranha

[khaosworks]

Mysterious case of the piranha that fell from the sky
By Arifa Akbar
21 February 2004

The Thames is home to over a hundred species of fish but never, until now, has a piranha been found in its murky waters.

One of the deadly Amazonian fish, shoals of which can devour big prey in seconds, mysteriously landed on a moored vessel in Dagenham, east London, having apparently fallen out of the sky.

The three crew of the Thames Bubbler environmental boat, which pumps oxygen into the river, identified the razor-toothed fish as a piranha and called in marine experts to investigate.

Tom Cousins, a fisheries officer at the Environmental Agency, immediately recognised the specimen as a red-bellied piranha. He surmised that the fish had been accidentally dropped by a passing seagull which had plucked it out of the water.

Mr Cousins said: "I have to admit that I was pretty sceptical when I got a call from them telling me that a piranha had fallen out of the sky on to the vessel. But when I saw it, I recognised it by its shape, and it had a really good pair of teeth on it. It was very fresh and had obviously only just died. You could see the marks made by the seagull's beak on its back."

Mr Cousins thought that the fish, normally found in the warmer fresh waters of the Amazon, had probably been released by its former owner and swum along the Thames before it was picked up on Wednesday afternoon by a seagull.