14 DAY TRIAL // Late last month, an angler in Russia had the shock of a lifetime when he decided to take a peek inside a fish's mouth and found that the creature sported a complete set of human-like teeth.
The peculiar fish, a photo of which is available next to this article, was caught in the waters of a river in Russia's Arkhangelsk Oblast district.
Apart from the fact that its chompers were downright bizarre to say the least, it appears that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, the angler claims its gills were bright red and that it showed no signs of illness.
A not-so-lucky catch
Local media reports say the angler pulled this fish from the waters of the Northern Dvina River. At first, the 50-year-old man, identified as Aleks Korobov, failed to figure out that something was seriously off.
Thus, after taking one quick glance at the creature, the man assumed that it was a run-off-the-mill bream. It was only after he opened its mouth to have a look inside that he realized that was no ordinary fish.
“I opened its gills which were nice and red but I noticed the mouth wasn't right for a bream and when I opened it I nearly dropped the thing in surprise,” the 50-year-old man told the press in an interview, as cited by Metro.
Having realized that this Northern Dvina River dweller was nothing like the other fish either he or his friends had caught before, Aleks Korobov did not take long to end the very special fishing expedition and rushed to tell everybody about his find.
Since fish with human-like teeth aren't exactly a common sight, be it in Russia or in some other place of the world, the man's fishing buddies first assumed that the 50-year-old had been drinking and was imagining things.
It was not until they had the chance to have a look at the weird creature that they realized that, this one time, Aleks Korobov was not telling lies. Needless to say, the 50-year-old's friends were quite freaked out by the fish as well.
So, what's the deal with this fish anyway?
It is understood that, after examining the fish up-close and also performing an autopsy on it, specialists with Russia's Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography concluded that it was not a bream, but a piranha. How and why it ended up living in Russia's Northern Dvina River remains a mystery.
“We are convinced it is a member of the Piranha family, and that it is a herbivore piranha, not one of the meat eating ones you see in films,” specialist Gennady Dvorykankin said in a statement.
“It is very unlikely that it made its way from its natural tropical waters to our Arctic and then into the river, so we can only assume it was dumped by an owner of exotic fish,” he added.
