Piranha 'cousin' found on Old Hickory shore
Casting poles for fish at Old Hickory Lake, a man and his daughters were surprised to stumble on a cousin of the piranha.
With frequent snow this winter, Dave Manis and his two daughters, Zoe, 7, and Piper, 5, took advantage of the first warm day and hit Old Hickory Lake for a fishing adventure that turned more interesting than they expected.
“While we were fishing, Zoe noticed a fish laying on the grass and said, ‘Daddy, Daddy, check out the teeth!’” said Manis, 40. “That’s what caught my attention.”
About 10 feet from the water on the shore near the mouth of Old Hickory and Drakes Creek Cove, right off Cherokee Road in Hendersonville, laid a dead fish. And although birds had bitten into its body and eyes, its teeth remained untouched.
“As soon as I saw it, I recognized it from seeing it at the Nashville Zoo,” Manis said. “It’s the pacu, a cousin to the piranha. I knew it wasn’t a piranha because a piranha’s teeth are sharp and pointy, and if you look at this guy’s teeth, they’re flat, almost like a person’s teeth. It does not belong north of the equator, so seeing one here is very unusual. The freeze probably killed it, as there are a bunch of shad washing up now also as a result of the cold snap.”
“The large molar-looking teeth suggest that it is the omnivorous pacu species, and not the man-eating piranhas that get all the public attention,” Fiss said. “Every year we get a few reports of anglers catching pacu throughout the summer in various locations throughout the state.”
Pacu, a word with Brazilian-Indian origin, is the common name for several species of omnivorous South American freshwater fish related to the piranha. While both have similar teeth, piranhas have more pointed, razor-sharp teeth in a pronounced underbite, whereas pacus have squarer, straighter teeth in a less severe underbite or a slight overbite. A full-grown pacu is also much larger than a piranha and can weigh up to 60 pounds.
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