Piranha.
Legends tell of the most ferocious fish in world.
With razor-Sharp teeth, they hunt in packs,
Stripping a body of its flesh in minutes.
They have a reputation for killing and eating humans.
Literally being stripped of all the flesh.
Only the boots were left.
But it may not be justified.
I don't think the reputation of piranhas
As bloodthirsty monsters is deserved at all.
I'm jeremy wade, biologist and extreme angler.
And my mission is to find out if piranhas really are
The ultimate horror of the amazon.
All they said that they saw was just a turbulence in the water
Of the piranhas devouring the child.
I remember a story from the '70s of a bus crashing into the amazon river in brazil.
The people inside were eaten alive by piranhas.
Horrific stories like this have been circulating
Since the discovery of south america.
But every single piece of scientific research i found
Says that piranhas don't kill people.
So are these stories real, or are they just overexaggerated urban myths?
Fish on. Fish on.
I've traveled the globe literally putting my life on the line
To prove that there are giant man-Eating fish where no one would expect them...
Big old mouth on there.
In our freshwater rivers.
But now it's the turn of the small guys.
Could piranhas really kill and eat a human?
Are they the bloodthirsty killers from the movies that fill our nightmares?
I visited london zoo to talk to brian zimmerman,
A piranha expert and assistant curator of the aquarium, to see what he thinks.
There's no documented cases of a living human
Going into the water and being attacked by a group of piranhas
And being reduced to a skeleton in seconds.
But piranha are carnivorous fish.
If they're hungry, it's certainly possible that they would attack
To try to get food.
I don't see why a human would be any different than an egret falling in the water.
It's just... For a piranha, it's a potential food source.
But to my knowledge, that's never happened.
So if brian believes piranhas have never attacked and killed a living person,
Then did this bus crash that i remember really take place?
I decide to head to manaus, the city at the heart of the amazon,
To see if i can get to the bottom of this memory
And maybe track down a definite case where piranhas have eaten someone alive.
And where better to start my investigation
Than the home of many a gruesome fishermen's tale... The manaus fish market.
With over 2,000 species of fish found in the amazon river...
More than the entire atlantic ocean... There's no shortage
Of strange-Looking river monsters here.
Wicked-Looking spines on there. Such a variety of fish here.
Scientists have determined that there are
Some 60 different species in the piranha subfamily.
Yet the majority of them are actually vegetarian.
It is the flesh-Eating behavior of just a couple of species
That gives them their reputation.
And it's not long before my questions unearth another shocking account
That shows just what they are capable of.
This is a piranha story.
And old man was left in his floating house by his family just for a couple of hours.
They came back, he'd gone.
There were just his clothes there.
So, you know, they thought he must have gone to take a bath
Or something, but he wasn't in sight anywhere.
They searched, they searched.
Eventually, they found just his skeleton.
I mean, literally... He'd gone in the water.
Because he was old, he wasn't able to get back out, and the piranhas just had him.
Two months ago.
It's another gruesome story.
But here at the market, i can't track down a name or definite location
For this fisherman's tale.
I'm gonna have to search further afield
To find an eyewitness to a lethal piranha attack.
The amazon river is 4,250 miles long, twice the length of the mississippi.
It is mostly wide and slow-Moving,
But up this distant tributary, it is quite the opposite.
1/5 of all the water on earth passes through the amazon,
And piranhas and their relatives are found in just about all of it.
It's a fisherman's paradise.
And it's full of river monsters.
And there's a fish on. There's a fish on.
Oh, there it is. There it is jumping out of the water.
That's quite strong. That's a strong fish.
I've hooked a predatory fish with dental hardware straight out of a horror movie.
So this is a payara. It's a relative of the piranha.
It is an arms war down there. Everything's got teeth.
Everything is eating everything else.
And they've actually got those fangs there in the lower jaw.
And they use those to puncture the swim bladder of the prey,
So it just messes up the buoyancy.
The small fish is then totally out of control.
It's flopping around near the surface,
And these will just come along afterwards and mop them up.
And those fangs are that big that it has to have special holes in the upper jaw.
Otherwise it wouldn't be able to get its mouth closed.
So it's probably some very precise engineering
Going on out of sight that we can't see.
This vampire-Like creature shows how evil-Looking the piranha family can get.
But despite its looks, it is not the fish responsible for attacking people.
This is a solitary fish hunter.
The piranha we all fear feed in packs.
And they are so common in the amazon you can catch them almost anywhere.
Normally, i use high-Tech gear and stealthy tactics to lure a monster onto my line.
But the piranha's method of feeding is so bold that i'm changing my approach.
I've dispensed with my normal rod.
And i'm just using a bit of bamboo with a short length of line on the end.
Tried-And-Tested means of catching piranha.
Just a hook on the end with a piece of wire
So they i don't chomp through the line, lump of meat.
And unlike other techniques where you're being quiet and stealthy,
Piranhas are actually attracted by noise and disturbance on the surface.
Oh. There we go.
Red-Bellied piranha.
In just a couple of minutes, i've caught a small piranha.
But do not be deceived.
It still has knife-Like teeth
That can easily remove a lump of flesh in a single bite.
Multiply that by the hundred or so mouths in a hungry school of piranhas
And it's a death of a thousand individual cuts.
A protruding jawbone with large chomping muscles
Means that when the mouth is closed, the triangular teeth from both jaws
Lock together like a bear trap.
They are perfectly adapted to slice off pieces of meat, fins, or scales,
Literally taking apart their prey piece by piece.
They predominantly hunt fish, but they will eat the meat of almost any animal
That crosses their path.
And in this river, with almost every cast i'm catching a piranha.
This river is just absolutely full of piranhas.
They're just all over the place.
Doesn't mean to say, though, that i can't do this.
Surely swimming in a piranha-Infested river is suicide.
This water may be full of piranhas, but they're not attacking me.
If i can swim here and it's true that the old man from the fish-Market story
And the victims of the bus crash were eaten alive, then something is missing
That is needed to trigger a feeding frenzy.
Still alive.
There's plenty of water here.
I'm guessing there's enough food for them down there
Without them wanting to attack me.
So what about if i set something up where i know there are plenty of piranhas
And i know that they're hungry?
Welcome to my piranha pool.
Here at a local hotel, just like my favorite bond villain,
I've filled a small swimming pool with over 100 red-Bellied piranhas,
And they haven't eaten for days.
It's the perfect opportunity to test just how voracious these creatures are.
Everybody knows about sharks being bloodthirsty killers.
Just wondering if piranhas have the same kind of sensitivity to blood.
Piranhas have evolved to live in the murky sediment-Filled waters of the amazon
Where visibility is often less than a foot,
So a good sense of smell to locate their next meal is surely essential.
That's definitely getting a reaction.
There's a number of fish have come into that cloud of blood,
And they're looking around.
They want something to chew into, but there's nothing there at the moment.
I think time to put a bit of flesh in there for them.
So blood is definitely whetting their appetite.
And there would have been blood in the water
From those injured by the impact of the bus crash.
Now, i wonder how these piranhas will react to a bloody piece of prime steak.
There we go.
It's the first nibble, first nibble, first nibble.
And there they are. They're all piling in.
Once the first one started, there we go. All over.
Piranhas react to the sound and movement
Of another piranha feeding, attracting them to the scene
And inciting a feeding frenzy.
As soon as one piranha takes a bite, it moves away,
Allowing a fast turnover of feeders and a rapid succession of bites.
It's no wonder they are known for stripping their food to the bone in just minutes.
There we go. Meat definitely works.
I just wanted to know how they might react to something that's alive.
These piranhas were tearing into a piece of dead meat just a couple of minutes ago,
But they are just not interested in me.
So, what is it that turns piranhas into vicious, murderous killers?
That is what i want to try and find out.
If the story of the bus crash is true,
Then presumably... Just like my piranha pool...
There was human flesh, blood, and a mass of hungry piranhas.
Yet i am unharmed.
To people on the bus weren't so lucky.
As i continue my investigation, i discover the evidence
To prove that the bus crash definitely happened.
But more significantly, i tracked down a survivor
Who had an unbelievable escape on that day.
Maybe he can give me the details of exactly what happened
So i can work out what triggers a piranha attack.
I've come to the amazon to find out
If piranhas are the bloodthirsty killers of myth
Or if the truth is a little more complicated.
I've managed to unearth a newspaper report from the 1970s
That describes the exact bus crash that i remember
Where some of the passengers were eaten by piranhas.
It reports that on the 14th of november, 1976, the bus was traveling from manaus
To the town of itacoatiara, a journey of about five hours.
After driving through the night, it crashed into a tributary of the amazon,
Killing 39 passengers.
The newspaper also mentions the name of a survivor... Dirceu araujo.
I've managed to track him down
To find out what he can remember from that fateful day,
As this might allow me to pass judgment on the guilt or otherwise of the piranha.
Dirceu tells me he was sitting at the very rear of the bus,
And like the rest of the passengers, he had been sleeping for most of the journey.
On board that day were several families, a couple of students named alex and ivan,
As well as many other men and women returning to their homes in itacoatiara.
Not long before the accident, the bus went through a pothole, waking dirceu up.
This, he tells me, could well have saved his life.
This is the very spot where the accident happened.
The bus came down here, went in the river down there.
Dirceu doesn't not know if the brakes failed or if the bus skidded,
But the driver had done the same route several times that day.
The papers at the time reported the suggestion that he fell asleep
And at the ferry crossing carried straight on into the river.
One minute everything's normal.
Literally the next moment, it's in the water.
There were people crying, wailing, much despair.
There were people at the front trying to open the door by pulling it.
He's basically saying that, you know, that door only opens if you push.
Then the water... The water started to come in,
At which point he went back to where he'd been seated.
There was a boy there who'd been trying to break the window,
And he saw actually saw... Dirceu saw this boy's foot disappearing out of the bus,
And he saw the foot, followed it, managed to get himself out through the same hole.
He's just about clear of the bus.
Somebody grabbed hold of his leg. Can you imagine?
Somebody is trying to grab hold of his leg
While he is trying to escape and get to the surface.
Actually had to kick this person's hand off to get free from the bus
And actually, you know, escape from the wreck.
39 people remained trapped on the bus and didn't survive.
In the panic of his escape, dirceu doesn't remember seeing any piranhas,
So no one knows how long it was after the bus submerged that the piranhas attacked.
Even to this day, just going over the bridge, which they've got now over the river,
He says every time he crosses, he just remembers that day.
It was several hours before rescuers could winch the bus out of the water.
By that time, it was far too late for any remaining passengers.
There were three children and one baby actually all from the same family.
They were brought up dead.
There was one body there had literally been stripped of all the flesh.
Only the boots were left.
The impact piranhas have on a human body is distinct
And may be too shocking for some viewers to see.
These horrific images from recent cases arriving at the manaus city morgue
Show just what a piranha is capable of doing and the type of wounds it leaves.
Exposed flesh and soft tissue are removed first,
Which is exactly what dora di barbossa witnessed when she arrived on the scene
As the bodies were being extracted from the bus.
She told me that some of the victims were brought out still hugging each other.
And her story made me truly realize what it meant to lose someone in this crash.
Dora was just 17 years old at the time of the tragedy.
And what happened... She was living in itacoatiara,
And she just actually started her nurse training at the time.
And, so, she actually went to the river of the site of the accident.
Hmm.
That's pretty tragic.
Dora says she did know some of the people on the bus,
Which just makes it sort of extra, extra horrific, really.
There was the husband of the teacher of hers,
And she says that his face was completely eaten away down...
Not down to the bone but down to cartilage.
And also, a lad called ivan, who she liked very much,
This was her childhood sweetheart.
And he was one of the victims, as well.
And she said that because of this, she found it very difficult early on
To talk about this whole business.
But as a result of this, she said she actually, you know,
Left the area and didn't return for a while because of the memories of the place.
Just like the testimonies from the bus crash,
The morgue pictures leave us in no doubt
As to the horrors piranhas can inflict on a human body.
But as the bus crash happened 30 years ago,
It's impossible to know if the victims died of the wounds inflicted by the piranhas
Or if they were already dead.
We know that on the bus, they were trapped, there was blood in the water,
And people were eaten by piranhas.
But did the piranhas attack and eat their victims alive
Or did they merely scavenge the corpses of those who had already drowned?
So even though i have found my bus crash,
The case against the piranha still hangs in the balance.
My quest to investigate the bloodthirsty reputation of the piranha
Is still unresolved.
Although piranhas have without doubt fed on dead human flesh, i'm yet to find proof
That they have killed a living human.
Maybe brian zimmerman was right.
I don't think the reputation of piranhas
As bloodthirsty monsters is deserved at all.
Piranha are just animal that is trying to survive in the wild
When they happen to be a carnivorous fish.
Yet in flooded water bodies like this, scientists have discovered
That there are double the number of piranhas than normal.
And this has led to a situation where their innocence is once again in question.
All over brazil, dams like this have created artificial lakes
Which are very popular places to come for a swim,
Particularly in the heat of the dry season.
Put that together with a concentrated population of piranhas
And you're asking for trouble.
Humans being attacked by man-Eating fish is the stuff of nightmares.
And it has fueled an industry of fear which hollywood has happily embraced.
If you're on a beach by the ocean, sharks can be a very real concern.
It's not uncommon to enter the water with a fear of what might lurk beneath.
But deep inland, over a thousand miles from the sea,
Most people would not expect to be a victim.
Yet on the weekend of december the 21st, 2005, at the end of the dry season,
This is exactly what happened.
On a beach exposed by the seasonal low water, eight people were attacked.
And the perpetrators of these attacks were piranhas.
In a period of seven months, 190 people were bitten by piranhas.
Unlike the bus crash, these weren't frenzied attacks
Which left the corpses half eaten.
These were individual bites.
No one was trapped, injured, or bleeding.
Yet the piranhas were definitely attacking live people.
Obviously, something strange had occurred here.
I've come to one of these artificial lakes
Created by a dam to find out what's going on
And to see what kind of piranhas are living here.
All this used to be rainforest.
But when the water rose, the trees all died, just leaving this weird landscape.
There we go. There's a knot. There's something on there.
Right. Here we go. Here we go.
That's a sizable fish.
That's a piranha, but that is a big piranha.
Now, this is something i've got to be very careful with.
Careful, careful, careful, careful, careful.
And there it is.
Imagine swimming with these boys in the water.
Oh, crunch.
Oh!
Crunching on the hook as i take it out.
How about that for a piranha?
This is a black piranha.
It's the biggest species of piranha.
Look at those teeth. Look at those teeth.
I'm being extremely careful here.
They just have such powerful jaws,
And that would take a serious size lump out of you...
Literally the size of that jaw,
That would be the size of the hole that you'd be missing.
Those teeth are so sharp that when people get cut by them,
They say they don't even feel it when it happens.
They only notice it when they see the blood.
It was these kinds of attacks, single bites, that were being made at the beach.
But again, brian's theory that piranhas are misunderstood has an explanation.
Piranha tend to build their nests in very shallow areas
Because they need to have vegetation, not only for the eggs to stick to
But also for the young fry to retreat when they're first hatching.
So, in cases where people have been bitten,
I mean, i suppose somebody wading in shallow water
And happens to tread onto the nest of a piranha
Where there's a big male defending its eggs
Is definitely gonna be susceptible to getting a bite.
The beach attacks occurred when there were most people in the water
On the hottest days of the end of the dry season.
It is at this point, usually just after the first rains, when piranhas breed.
All they were doing was simply what most living creatures do...
Protecting their young.
So these multiple piranha attacks actually reveal a caring animal
That, in this instance, has no intention to kill.
Piranha are very nervous fish.
We were involved in a study recently which was looking at the reasons
For shoaling behavior in piranha, and the study actually found
That instead of them being pack hunters and living together in groups
Because they're trying to hunt their prey,
They actually live in shoals to avoid predators themselves
And it's like a case of safety in numbers.
If piranhas group together because of their mortal fear of another river monster,
Then this is a creature i need to meet.
Piranhas may enjoy a reputation as evil killers but here in the amazon,
They are far from the top of the food chain.
This river is a supremely predatory environment.
And i'm told that there are wild river monsters that come here to be fed by locals.
These creatures are highly adapted killers and greatly feared by the piranhas.
And once again, i'm the guinea pig that is entering the water to meet them.
Dolphins.
Who would have thought it?
Thousand miles from the ocean, right up the amazon river.
Freshwater dolphins.
And these guys... I mean, they're are having fun now,
But my goodness... They've also got a dark side.
We're in the middle of a frenzy. That one bit my thumb.
That one got my thumb. Oh, dear.
Hey!
And these are the guys that take out piranhas.
Little bit eager, a little bit eager.
The jaw... Very, very long and elongated, full of teeth...
Just perfect for grabbing fish.
Wow.
They've also got this really strange bulging head,
And that's actually... Oop! And echolocation organ.
A lot of these waters in the amazon are very murky.
And they can't see their prey.
But even in that situation, they can find and kill their prey... Ohh!
Using sonar.
Ohh-Hoo-Hoo.
You know, you've got to be very, very careful tangling with these creatures.
Time for me to get out, i think.
The amazon is the most predator-Filled waterway on the planet.
Everything kills or is killed.
I've spent years fishing this river, and i know it is crammed full
Of the meanest, nastiest creatures.
Perhaps piranhas are not unusual.
They just get singled out for attention because they capture our imagination.
But that still doesn't explain what triggers their attacks.
It's strong and heavy.
Look at this!
A new species for me.
I know the species, but i've never, never, never caught one.
There's a lump taken out of it by piranha.
They can tell when a fish is in distress, and they go after it.
You can actually see the shape here of a piranha jaw.
Something chomped this fish on the way in.
You know, normally these fish
Are paying complete attention to not ending up on the menu.
This one basically thinking about something else for just a moment,
And a piranha came and chopped it.
So you've literally got to watch your back.
This armored catfish was a fantastic catch.
But seeing the piranha bite on its back has crystallized everything for me.
This fish lives in and amongst piranha every day of its life.
Yet, struggling on the end of my line, it instantly became a target.
It is the thrashing struggle of distress
That triggers the piranha's natural instincts to target the weak and helpless.
This explains why i can swim and splash around with piranhas
Yet the struggle for life in the bus crash
Initiated the piranhas' predatory instincts.
It's sobering to think of what happened to those poor passengers that day
As they traveled back to their hometown.
Their lives were never meant to cross with piranhas.
Yet, for thousands of people in the amazon, life is literally lived on the water.
With such huge seasonal variations in water level,
Entire villages float on the river.
And there's one whose very name
Suggests the reality they deal with on a daily basis.
This place is known as "the piranha reserve."
I've come here to find out what life is like
Living with the constant threat of piranhas.
These people are known as ribeirinhos, or river people.
Almost everything they need is sourced from or around the amazon river.
Let's see if the piranha reserve lives up to its name
And what kind of piranhas they have here.
The line is flat on the surface.
There it goes.
Red-Bellied. There we go.
Whoop! Now, right.
You can see why people... I couldn't do that if i didn't have shoes on.
You can see why so many people here are missing bits out of their toes.
Every one of these is a red-Bellied.
I mean, this one's got slight spots on it, as well,
But that just means it's a juvenile.
Again, again. Here we go.
There's almost more fish than water.
Every single chuck, out comes a red-Bellied piranha.
They're not very big, but my goodness.
There are just loads of them down here.
I've heard all these stories about piranhas being capable of skeletonizing bodies
Literally within moments or minutes.
I've got this freshly killed duck here from the market,
And i think it's time to put those stories to the test.
It's apparent that the sound,
The thrashing of a distressed animal is what attracts them.
So just a little bit of movement to start them honing in.
Right, they're in there.
They're in there already.
I just saw a flash of silver with very distinctive red, as well.
Right, they're starting to arrive now.
Once one finds it, basically, you know, that just kicks the whole thing off.
Look at that. Doing the head there.
They've already just stripped all the flesh from the spine.
Flip this in and have a look.
Oh. Right.
From the back, this didn't look too bad,
But actually flip it over, the side where the fish were,
And they've made a real mess of that.
They've actually chewed through a huge expanse of feather
To get at the meat, and they've gone right into the body cavity.
They've taken most of the meat away.
There's a huge section of actually the backbone gone in the neck.
The head is just reduced to bone.
Both eyes are gone.
And all this just in a matter of minutes.
It's easy to forget that this is right outside someone's front door.
For the people who live here, dealing with the dangers of piranhas on a daily basis
Is just part of life.
I visit some of the families who live here to find out how they cope.
But i discover a story of a piranha attack that chills me to my very bones.
This remote place is actually called the piranha reserve.
But what i soon learn is that it is in the dry season
When the water is low and the piranhas are concentrated
That the villagers are most at risk.
It is a particular time of year.
It's principally the months of september and october here.
You can't even get in the water to have a wash.
The main food item here is fish, so there you are.
You have to clean the fish in order to prepare it for the meal,
And just the smell of that will bring a concentration of piranhas there,
So you got to be careful.
Keep your fingers nowhere near the water.
But on one occasion, this family dropped their guard with horrific consequences.
It was a grandson of julio's.
They're saying, you know, you can't look after kids all the time.
His wife was cleaning some fish off the back of the house,
And the child just ran, as children do, from one side of the house to the other
And fell in the water at the other side.
And he said literally they heard a noise.
They got there. It was already too late.
The child fell in the water and just didn't come up.
All they said that they saw was just a turbulence in the water
Of the piranhas devouring the child just literally moments
After the child had fallen off the side of the boat.
With nets, they were trying to sort of retrieve the child,
Even while this was going on, and eventually, he said, all they got in was bones.
When i asked how long it took, he said, no, this happened very rapidly
Because, you know, there are just, you know, so many... So many piranhas here.
This is what i'd been searching for... A firsthand account
Of piranhas attacking, killing, and eating a human, in this case, a 3-Year-Old boy,
Who the grandfather preferred not to name.
Yet, the reality of hearing a story like this
Takes away all feelings of success i might have had.
It's one thing to hear the myth of piranhas,
But i mean, you know, it's quite something else
To talk to somebody who's actually seen the truth of that with their own eyes.
If you consider that this is just one of hundreds
Or even thousands of similar isolated settlements found all along the amazon,
Who knows how many more cases remain unreported?
These lads are just... They're just balancing on pieces of wood about that wide.
I've just heard this horrific story about somebody falling into this water
And getting just devoured in seconds, and they don't even seem bothered by it.
Much as we might live with the ever-Present threat
Of a lethal highway on our doorstep, these people continue their lives
Within feet of deadly piranhas.
I guess like a lot of things, you know, living in a floating house like this
With these piranhas underneath, after a while, it's just there.
It's just automatic. You just get used to it.
There are just precautions that you take.
You can't be thinking about it all the time.
If you were, you just wouldn't be able to get on with your life.
It's just this ever-Present presence underneath and all around you.
I set out on this journey to find an eyewitness to a piranha attack
In the hope that their evidence might give me the proof i needed
To know if the bloodthirsty reputation of the piranha is justified.
I've found that piranhas are sometimes shy,
Sometimes defensive, and they are somewhat misunderstood.
But if you have a very specific combination of the right time of year, blood,
The struggle of distress, and a trapped or weakened person,
You will trigger a piranha feeding frenzy.
In a river full of monsters, this is just a natural adaptation
To life here in the amazon.
But no water what, the piranha will continue to evoke fear
And horror in each and every one of us.