Toothy pacu fish caught in Swedish waters; skinny dippers are warned [View all]

[jpak]

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-pacu-fish-swedish-skinny-dippers-20130812,0,4419192.story

Swedish skinny dippers, you may want to pull on your swim trunks.

A sharp-toothed pacu fish has been caught in the Danish-Swedish strait of Oresund, putting swimmers on edge because of its resemblance to a piranha.

But Scandinavian fish experts say this fish is a mostly vegetarian cousin of the piranha. Still, they have advised swimmers that if they do venture in the water they should "keep their pants on."

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"All we suggested was that swimmers keep their pants on until we know if there are more of these fish out in our brackish waters," Peter Rask Møller, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, said in an email to the Los Angeles Times.

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