piranha

As you know I have a passion for stories of non native mega fauna – although a fish may be pushing the concept. My friend Ian Baker lives near Telford – I will be asking him why his tropical fish tank looks somewhat depleted on the strength of this story. It tells us:

There was horror, there was outrage – and just a little scepticism – when a flesh-eating piranha was said to have blocked a sewer in Telford.

A variety of mystery fish were found by investigators from Severn Trent Water after people complained of a fishy smell coming into their homes, according to the Shropshire Star.

Workmen were sent to clear the “piles of meat-eating piranhas”, and speculated that the culprit “was someone who became bored of their pet fish and decided to get rid of them by flushing them away”.

Matt Final and Jay Slater, who went to investigate the sewers for Severn Trent, said, in a statement released by the company: “We’ve certainly seen some weird things in the sewers over the years but we were a little shocked to remove piranhas! You wouldn’t think a fish of this size would fit down a toilet, but this is just one example of amazing things we find blocking the sewers.”

However, Star readers were quick to question the findings when the story was published alongside a photograph of the offending fish. Reader Lyndsey Bird was the first to comment: “Those are not piranhas, they appear to be some sort of cichlid, possibly Malawian. Piranhas have extremely small scales and a fused lower jaw. Not to mention the fin and body structure is all wrong.