Piranha bites French fisherman in Vosges

A piranha has bitten a fisherman in the chilly mountainous region of the Vosges in eastern France. The notoriously aggressive tropical fish usually lives in waters at more than 20°C temperature and appears to have been dumped in a local pond.

Mind your fingers! Piranhas are notoriously carnivorous Goddard_Photography

“I went to help a fisherman who was pulling a pike out of the water when he showed me the strange fish that he had caught and that had bitten his finger,” retired baker and fishing warden Jean-Claude Charpy told local paper, l’Est Républicain.

Fearing that people would think he was mad, he put the 17-centimetre-ling fish in his freezer, conquering the scepticism of the chairman of the local fishing club, Michel Dorner.

Pet shop owner Jonathan Fonmosse confirmed that the beast was a red-bellied piranha (pygocentrus nattereri), a breed that he sometimes sells to customers with aquariums.

The men believe that an aquarium-owner must have dumped the fish in the pond and believe there could be others.

But, if that is the case, “they have no chance of survival” because of the less-than-tropical temperatures of the forested region, Dorner says.