How did a predatory exotic fish get into the Ural waters?
In the garage-building cooperative "Splav" local men go to gawk at nibbler fish. Like small children, they surround a pond and flop on the water with branches - they call water predators to the shore. Even sophisticated fishermen shake their heads: "Where did such creatures come from here?"
“Three years ago we dug a hole so that rainwater would accumulate in the summer - it will come in handy on the farm,” says Dmitry Marchenko, deputy chairman of the cooperative. - The other day, the builders took water and scooped a fish into a bucket. Yes, such an outlandish: the nose with a hump, itself silvery, the belly - pink. And the jaw is like that of a person: teeth are even, sharp, small.
The deputy chairman hid the predator in the freezer and ran to the bookstore. Scrolling through the aquarist's encyclopedia, in the illustration I identified a fish from a pond - a piranha.
- I called the pet store to consult, - says Dmitry Petrovich, - they laughed at me. They say that the crazy grandfather took rotan for piranha.
- But what kind of rotan it is, - the watchman entered the conversation, - I have never caught such fish in the Urals. Yes, and she does not behave like shy crucians, only they will see movement in the water, like real predators, flock in a flock and quickly sort out their tail. All the tadpoles in the pond were exterminated.
Having learned about piranhas, inquisitive garage owners caught a small number of fish. One was frozen in the refrigerator, the other was placed in a basin to surprise friends. There was only one left, and that one did not dare to appear to us, the journalists - it lay at the bottom of a muddy puddle. Brave fishermen were not frightened even by horror films, in which they show the bloody eating of people by these toothy floaters. In Chelyabinsk, there were no excesses - so far no one has come to the hospital with piranha bites.
COMMENTARY OF THE ICHTIOLOGIST
These predators have already been caught in Moscow
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We filmed the fish in frontal view and profile and showed it to the employees of the laboratory of aquatic ecology of the Ilmensky Reserve.
“It looks like a real piranha,” the head of the laboratory, Alexander Rogozin, told us. - But this is not surprising. There are cases when piranhas were caught in Russian water bodies: in Moscow, Rostov. Most likely, one of the townspeople bought an exotic fish in a store, she lived in his aquarium, got tired of it, and the owners decided to release it. The piranha is not dangerous - it will not survive the Ural frosts.