Tho I must admit that I would never get that close to the surface with my bare hands while doing this.
They’re almost certainly starved. Piranha’s don’t normally swarm like this
But that’s what the cartoons showed.
Shit I forgot about the cartoon… how do I delete my erroneous comment
Piranhas* don’t normally
A grammar Nazi in 2024? I’m surprised. Yep, autocorrect added an apostrophe, good catch. I’m not changing it.
Ok, so why would anyone want to catch a piranha? Are they tasty or something?
Fish are food, not friends
No Bruce, for the last time
They look like they are 90% gristle and hatred.
The Ann Coulter of fishes.
Wikipedia claims they’re quite popular.
Reading more, everything I see describes them as bony, salty and very fishy tasting, best served smoked or grilled to mask the flavor.
Sounds like we’re not missing much.
Protein is protein and if this is where someone needs to get it, then this is what it will be
Except they’re using protein to catch the protein.
Think I would rather eat 20lbs of piranhas than 5lbs of rotting leg bone
Sounds like why I dislike most fish to begin with.
It’s that fishy taste that does it to me
Just cant pretend to like it at all
That’s interesting, I really like the fishy taste. If it’s overpowering it can be unpleasant, but in reasonably amounts it’s tasty.
Whitefish (why do you call Felchen like that?!) or Salmon fishy?
Because felching is something…else… over here.
Sounds right up my alley I love fishy tasting fish. Every time I go to sushi I always get the mackerel
They taste like fish. I’m not joking.
You must be joking.
At least one source who couldn’t comment publicly stated they weren’t joking
Surely you’re not serious
The one that I tasted was the red piranha, the same as in the video. The taste is… okay, not delectable but not awful; it’s simply a bit too strong. It goes great on soups/stews though.
I can’t tell from the video if the water is just muddy or if it’s actually, y’know, gross. Is it safe to eat the fish from that river?
Also, I’d always heard they didn’t do that unless they were starving. Which makes me think not much is surviving in that water, making me think it might not be safe to eat the fish :/
Though, I imagine if you’re desperate for protein, such things are secondary concerns at best
Brazilian here. Perfectly safe (color-wise; of course it can be polluted as hell despite its color, just like any other river).
Our ground/mud has a different color. Some areas on the south even have a red soil (very fertile, but makes everything about ground level look dirty very quickly): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_soil
There’s great variety of water colors even in the same area, just search for images “meeting of the waters Manaus”:
For a satellite view
Just jumping in to say that red soils are not very fertile. They are nutrient-poor in the necessary macro-nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus) and have a very poor ability to retain water. They are very rocky - little organic matter content - which limits both water retention and cationic exchange capacity (affecting N+ and K+ bioavailability), and tend to be acidic.
Cultivation is possible, but it requires large amounts of fertilizers and soil conditioning agents (liming to raise pH and add calcium, addition of organic matter). In effect, recreating an artificial soil that is closer in nutrient availability to the black soils present in the world’s most fertile regions (which today are also heavily fertilized).
I wrote red soil, but more specifically, where I lived there was Terra Roxa (purple soil?), which seems to be a kind of red soil according to the English Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_roxa
And it is the prevalent soil on the north of the state of Paraná, regarded as Brazil’s agricultural barn: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraná_(state)
So it does confuse me that the state’s soil would be unfertile, as I grew up learning how good it was and surrounded by prosperous farms.
The Portuguese Wikipedia page does talk about it being fertile (no English translation): https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_roxa
So maybe it isn’t a type of red soil in the end; or there are some types of red soil that are (very) fertile.
terra roxa is a type of latossolo in english latosol
Water can be like this when it rains a day or a couple hours before. Every river become like this when it rains. It is perfectly fine to eat fish from this river.
the issue today is thinking that mud is the definition of dirt, that river is probably 100 times cleaner than any tank/pond/lake used to farm fish, also i swan in pont that were way muddier, with piranhas too, sometimes
Wait until you find out how they catch catfish
Don’t they usually set up a sting and invite them out on a “date” where they’re then confronted about their lies and posted to Youtube?
How do they catch catfish?
Two main methods, the first is with a fishing pile like normal. The second is to get down into the water and feel up under the bank. If you wiggle your fingers a catfish will latch on, and you can just pull it out by hooking your fingers into the gills.
You reach into holes in river/lake beds hoping one tries to eat your hand
Can confirm what the others said
Here’s a short video of people doing it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=31m1XKJLonw
Lo, I never had any that big
What about barefoot! Those Brazilians are crazy lol
how they don’t bite each other in the middle of that caos
So you end up with chowder pretty much.
Damn, and I thought I was smart for making stock from bones
There’s a few videos online of piranhas absolutely stripping animal carcases. Shits gnarly.
