[frostfire]

Last Monday a piranha-like fish was discovered in one of the canals in Leiden, Holland. It was found by two fishermen, who witnessed an unusual battle between a heron and the fish; the heron threw the fish in the air a couple of times, but the fish was too wide for the heron to swallow. The fishermen chased the heron away and took the by now dead fish to Naturalis, the natural history museum in Leiden.
The 32 centimetre fish has been identified as a Pacu (Colossoma bidens) and belongs to the same fish family as the piranha (Characidae). The pacu is native to the Amazon and has two rows of sharp teeth. They don’t eat meat like piranhas but nuts and fruit. In the wild they can grow to 85 centimetres and weigh 20 kilograms, the one found in Leiden was 750 grams.
It is thought that the fish was a pet that had out-grown its welcome and had been dumped in the canal. Usually a tropical fish couldn’t have survived in the Dutch climate, but this particular canal is warmer than most, as it is the outlet of the cooling water of a nearby gas company, in which it is apparently quite well possible to live for tropical fish.
Until the spring the fish is on exhibition in Naturalis and after that they are going to research what the fish fed on during its life in the canal.