'Testicle Eating Fish' With Human-Like Teeth Caught In New Jersey

A fisherman at a South New Jersey lake caught an exotic fish native to South America with human-like teeth and an overblown reputation for munching on male genitalia.

Ron Rossi caught a pacu -- a tropical freshwater fish typically found in the Amazon River -- in Swedes Lake on Sunday, according to WPVI.

Pacus gained a reputation as "testicle eating fish" after Jeremy Wade featured them on a 2011 episode of his Animal Planet show "River Monsters." Wade said Amazonian locals told him two men died after they had their testicles bitten off by a fish.

British tabloids picked up the story and it became an Internet sensation.

"I had heard of a couple of fishermen in Papua, New Guinea, who had been castrated by something in the water," Wade said at the time. "The bleeding was so severe that they died. The locals told me that this thing was like a human in the water, biting at the testicles of fishermen. They didn’t know what it was."

Despite the sort of nickname that would make any man cross his legs in fear, pacus aren't much of a threat. They are in the same family of fish as the piranha, but they mostly eat plants, supplementing their diet with smaller fish at times, according to the Carroll County News.

They have considerable jaw power, strong enough to crack open tree nuts that fall into the water. But let's not confuse those kind of nuts with other sorts of nuts.

Pacu fish are usually found in the Amazon but have also been found in various parts of the United States, including a previous spotting in New Jersey, as well as Colorado, California, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Virginia, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

As for how this Amazonian fish ended up in Jersey, the state's Department of Environmental Protection said the pacu in question likely belonged to a fish hobbyist. These fish are just a few inches long when they are typically purchased. When they reach maturity, however, they can be 3 feet long and more than 40 pounds, earning a reputation as "tank busters."

"Every once in a while, someone who has bought one of these fish realizes it has outgrown its welcome, gotten too big and they release it into some lake," department spokesperson Lawrence Hajna told The Huffington Post. "I’m sure that’s what happened here. Any fish like this won’t survive our winters because the waters get too cold."



Dangerous Days