Talk:Pacu

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Former good article nomineePacu was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 10, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 11, 2006.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that the pacú fish (pictured) is marketed as a "vegetarian piranha" in pet stores, and was described by Theodore Roosevelt as "delicious eating"?

Pacu in Panama Canal[edit]

I have seen, and eaten, several pacu that were caught in the Panama canal, specifically Gatun lake. Are they an introduced/invasive species there? There seems to be no mention of the occurrence of pacu in the Panama canal or other Central American lakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.224.3.238 (talk) 07:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading information[edit]

"Additionally, pacú are usually available in pet stores when they are a mere 2-3 inches long, but, unlike other breeds of fish, their growth is not inhibited by a small tank.[3]"

This information is slightly misleading, while it is accurate about the Pacu requiring a large tank, it implies that other large fish can live in small tanks with no ill effects. Large fish that are forced to inhabit small aquaria often suffer serious medical problems due to the fact that their internal organs carry on growing after their outer body has stopped. Therefore I think this section should be slightly reworded.

Pacu found in Utah Lake[edit]

Angler catches strange piranha-like fish in Utah Lake 166.70.233.89 02:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I added this and other recent news stories about US introductions into the main article. Neil916 15:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Future merge[edit]

This article may want to be merged into the species article Colossoma macropomum once it is created. Alternatively, we may want to create a whole "Pacu" disambiguation page since Fishbase lists several different species with the word "Pacu" in the common name. Neil916 15:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I've expanded this article considerably now. Should the Piaractus mesopotamicus article be merged with this one now? Or will there be pages on each of the various pacu species?--Renice 19:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Accent removed from "Pacú"[edit]

I added accents on the fish's name (where it wasn't quoted from other sources without accents). It could be argued that they're not needed since this is an English article, and the word is most often spelled without the accent in English. However, I noted that the NY Times editors used the accent; see Rohter, Larry (2004-10-26). "Big Fish, Little Fish Battle Over the Amazon's Bounty". NY Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) --Renice 17:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pacu has no accent in the Portuguese language, as it is a word ended in U with the stress on the last syllable. --Zelani 11:00, 11 August 2006 (BST)
Ahh, thanks! --Renice 13:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Removed alternative listed ("Pacu" or "pacú"). Once again, "Pacú" is a grammatical error. Barring dipthongs or hiati, no word ending in "u" in Portuguese carries an accent, for no reason whatsoever. I also corrected the IPA pronunciation, as it reflected an English rendering of the word. --Zelani 13:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The name of this fish is not derived from any European language, but rather, from the ancient South American language, Tupi--- the accent is appropriate. The name of this language should also have an accent on the "i." Unfortunately, I can't locate a character set on this machine, from which to get the acute accent! RedShiner (talk) 03:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quotations from T. Roosevelt book[edit]

I added quotations from Teddy Roosevelt's memoir of a Brazilian trip, specifically because he talks about eating pacús, and methods of catching them. I think this is important because I haven't found any other sources that refer to the pacú as a food source. I will add citations as quickly as I can figure out how to do so; I'm actually referencing Bartleby's online version of Roosevelt's book. I believe this qualifies as Fair Use. --Renice 18:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Photos needed[edit]

Could use some more photos: of various species; something showing teeth more clearly; image of prepared pacu dish; on fishing lines or in nets... ? --Renice 20:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've sent a request to Claus Qvist Jessen for permission to use his pacu and piranha teeth photos posted at http://www.cqj.dk/fisk-eng.htm.
--Renice 22:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also sent a request to Thorke Østergaard for permission to use his photo of a pacu at a fish market, and he agreed (see User_talk:Renice/Photo_Permissions). So there's now a great photo for sense of scale. --Renice 22:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is it illegal to make the top photo lighter? I think I know how to make it lighter and visible. - THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 08:16, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since the photo was loaded with a GNU Free Documentation License, I think it should be OK to edit it and reload it. I would probably load the edited version as a new file, but I don't know if that's the accepted way to do it... ? --Renice 13:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Subfamily name change to Serrasalminae[edit]

Checking through the 69 species of pacú on FishBase (note not all the fish listed on this page are pacu -- the search included names that had p-a-c-u in their common name), I found that all are listed in the subfamily Serrasalminae. Therefore, I've changed the subfamily in the taxobox to Serrasalminae from Characinae. Their relationship to piranha makes a little more sense this way too. --Renice 17:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, I believe there should be a separate page for Serrasalminae -- it should not be redirected to piranha since pacú are also in the subfamily. --Renice 17:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I'm now confused about the correct Family and Subfamily. A couple of sources (http://www.opefe.com/serrasalminae.html and http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/path/Serrasalmidae.html#Serrasalmidae) suggest the taxobox should possibly be:
Class: Actinopterygii
Subclass: Neopterygii
Infraclass: Teleostei
Superorder: Ostariophysi
Order: Cypriniformes
Suborder: Charocoidei
Family: Serrasalmidae
and piranha should also have Subfamily: Serasalminae
ITIS isn't coming up so I'm unable to check it there...
--Renice 03:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article[edit]

This article doesn't focus on the Pacu fish in their natural environments much. Instead, it focuses on human interaction with the fish. It needs to broadened before it can become a Good Article. Everything else is great. Nice job on the referencing. --GoOdCoNtEnT 19:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I read this pretty nice article, I did want to add however that fish don't stay small based on their tank size. That's a very common misconception but one that is never borne out & is a well-known "myth" in aquarist circles. ALL fish will continue to their adult size or else die from stress (more likely in the case of fish larger than home aquaria can typically handle). You cannot control or stunt their growth like a bonzai tree. In otehr words, all fish are like the Pacu, it's only exceptional insofar as it is especially large for a pet fish & a miserable candidate for home aquaria, not unlike parrotfish or sharks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.120.57.3 (talkcontribs) .

I agree, I made the edit concerning the size. It seems to imply that there are fish that will grow to thier environment, which simply is not true.

Image request[edit]

Someone requested images of the fish, one request was of prepared pacu. I found this image [1], can someone verify if that is pacu? --Inahet 00:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to say from the photo -- given the title, I'd assume they ordered "pacu" from a menu. However, this photo [2] seems to be a different perspective on the same dish, and the teeth look more like piranhas'. It may be irrelevant because of copyright though. --Renice 04:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Actually both photos can be uploaded since both have Creative Commons Attribution Licenses, v. 2.0., like this photo I uploaded. So if it is pacu, anyone can upload it. Anyway, the fish's tail in the image of prepared pacu doesn't match that of a piranha but it does look like that of the pacu fish. --Inahet 16:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good points! The author provided me some details on the dish, and I've added it to page. Thanks! --Renice 22:57, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad that I was of some help. Inahet 01:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scott Curry[edit]

Shouldn't info on the Pacu with human-like teeth caught by Scott Curry be included? Tim Long 05:47, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a link in External links to a video of him and his catch. There's also a link to an article about him from the Texas catch refs. --Renice 13:19, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article's future[edit]

Pacu are not considered a clade or valid taxonomic group; they're more of a "folk" grouping. This article treats the folk grouping, which I think is appropriate. I'm going to change the dab line at the top, though, to link to Pacu (disambiguation), which dab's among individual species as well as unrelated uses of the word. --Ginkgo100talk 19:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I boldly reorganized the article. Also, after reading some of the refs, it's apparent that this may be a valid taxonomic group, but a controversial one. I think this strengthens this article's case for future GA status. --Ginkgo100talk 19:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ginkgo. It's great that you're reorganizing this. In my understanding, Pacu is kind of semi-taxonomic, similarly to the situation of the mbuna. Members of the subfamily Serrasalminae are commonly known either as pacu, piranha, or silver dollar depending on the genera AND obvious physical features (large herbivores = pacu, schooling carnivores = piranha, smaller silvery fishes = silver dollars). But these names could overlap and don't always correlate with the current taxonomy. You might wanna check out Tilapia which is also going through a reorganizing due to confusion of taxonomy and common names. --Melanochromis 20:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Help[edit]

In a larger, 200 U.S. gallons aquarium (@756 metric liters), how many adult Pacus could be sucessfully raised from a 5-6 cm ,or two to three inch size, and enjoyed as "pets"? Is a large plecostomus compatible with these fish, and how aggressive are they amongst themselves? Would other fish work with them too? Perhaps the proper information can be integrated into the article, or an offshoot of the article. Thanks, Dr. Dan 02:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dr. Dan. I'm afraid a 200 gallons aquarium isn't big enough for multiple pacus. They will outgrow the tank and the dominant one will bully the others if there's not enough space to swim away. I used to have 2 black pacus in a medium sized pond and the bigger one kept bullying the smaller one all the time. In a more confined area, the aggression would probably be much worse I think. But my pacus ignored unrelated fish though. There were tons of various mbuna and other cichlids sharing the ponds, and I didn't see any got chased by the pacus. So my suggestion is that you keep a single pacu with other unrelated large fish, or instead of pacu, you can probably keep a small group of silver dollars which might be easier to manage in a 200 galllons tank. Cheers, --Melanochromis 03:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, and one pacu and say, five silver dollars in such a tank, O.K., or not O.K.? Dr. Dan 21:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
PLEASE DO NOT GET A PACU! 200 gallons is *not enough* to house even ONE pacu. Pacu will grow in excess of 3 feet in home aquaria and they are extremely powerful -- they can very easily break glass if they do not have enough room to move around. Here is a tank specs thread by Debra Mark (a member of Aquaria Central who has a 3240 gallon tank that contained a 25 year old pacu. The pacu passed away last year at 28 years of age): http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35644 Look at the SIZE of that fish and please reconsider. Get some piranha or something, but not pacu. Roan Art 15:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. These are very large fish not suited to any home aquarium. Only a public aquarium can maintain pacu in the long term. --Ginkgo100talk 20:09, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and another thing -- vegetarian or not, pacu have very powerful dentition and could probably take your finger off. --Ginkgo100talk 20:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

peculiarity of teeth[edit]

These fishes have peculiar teeth resembling human teeth. This may be a trivia, but worth mention in the article. (ref: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/29/fish_with_humanlike_teeth/ ). - Subh83 (talk | contribs) 03:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What's not trivia is that they eat people's balls. >:| 184.64.85.218 (talk) 22:57, 10 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's a hoax. See http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/P20 or http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/10/world/europe/scandanavia-swim-warning/index.html. Kostaki mou (talk) 20:17, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed[edit]

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Is this even remotely true?[edit]

This seems a bit unlikely:

http://now.msn.com/pacu-fish-which-is-known-to-eat-testicles-is-found-in-sweden

Any evidence for it?

SteveBaker (talk) 22:36, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The testicle eating claim is showing up a lot in the media (usually as part of a story reporting that naturalized populations of the fish have been found in some temperate region like Illinois or Sweden). The claim seems pretty fishy. This Wikipedia article does treat the claim with some skepticism, using language like "rumoured" and "reported". It'd be nice to see the claim DEBUNKED, although I'm not sure that there are the sources available at present to do so.
The original source for this claim seems to be an Australian newspaper article from 2001. I can't find a copy of the article hosted by the news site (this is the dead link, but there are several internet forum posts that purport to quote it:

Two Papua New Guinea fishermen have bled to death after having their penises bitten off by pirahna-like river fish. The fish, which zero in on urine streams in the water, have struck terror among villagers along the Sepik River, in northwestern PNG. Authorities believe the killer fish is an introduced member of the South American pacu family and a relative of the piranha. In both of last month's fatalities, the fish demonstrated a trait of the piranha by following a trail of urine in the water, swimming to its source and then biting it off with razor-sharp teeth.

Some believe the killer may be a food-source fish introduced from Brazil in 1994 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the PNG National Fisheries Authority (NFO). However marine biologist and aquaculturist Ian Middleton said he believed they were a different species, introduced from across the PNG-Indonesia border. He denied the fish were the descendants of the pacu species introduced to the Sepik River in 1994 and the Ramu River at Madang in 1997 by the FAO and the NFA as a protein substitute. "The killer fish have the most human-like teeth on the bottom jaw I have ever seen and quite possibly feed on insects," he said. Middleton said the FAO/NFA-introduced pacu grew to 20 kilos and had no teeth. Pacu are mainly vegetarian but will adapt to eat almost anything. Middleton said he believed the killer fish had started biting humans because of a lack of naturally occurring food. "The reason for biting people on their genitals I believe is a result of the fish detecting a chemical change in the water, swimming up the urine trail and biting the genitals." Middleton said this behaviour was well-documented in the Amazon, where other species of the piranha family attack in response to urine or blood.

He said people along the Ramu River were now harvesting the introduced pacu and there had been no reports of attacks on humans. "I do not believe that in over five years of research and careful consideration that the FAO and the NFA would be stupid enough to introduce such a hazardous species, nor any relative of the piranha," Middleton said. However the Director of the PNG Office of Environment and Conservation, Dr Wari Iamo, yesterday expressed "grave concern and dissatisfaction" at the way some government agencies and donor organisations had gone about importing exotic plant and animal species. "A classic example is the salvinia molesta (a floating water weed) control program in the Sepik during the 1980s which cost millions of kina (dollars) because someone accidentally introduced the weed into the river system," he said. "In the last two decades various agencies and individuals have introduced over 30 species of exotic fishes into the country."

In 2011, Jeremy Wade, the host of a sensationalistic TV series (River_Monsters#Season_3:_2011) traveled to New Guinea and caught a pacu. I haven't watched the episode, so I'm not sure what claims were made in the TV show, but Wade's exploits are summarized in this story from the Daily Mail (which is not a particularly reputable news source). In the Daily Mail story, "At least two fishermen have bled to death...", which is the same number of fatalities reported in the 2001 story, although the 2001 story talks about pacus biting off penises, while the targeted organs have become testicles in the Daily Mail story. This is how urban/jungle legends work, with details changing with retelling. Also, in the 2001 story, Middleton is quoted as saying that the pacu targets urine trails to find prey. This behavior is widely reported for the candiru, another fish with a legendary propensity for attacking genitalia, but the claim that the candiru follows traces of urine has been debunked. It appears that Middleton is confusing candiru and pacu. Some of the more recent news reports on pacu are now claiming that people in the Amazon (not Papua New Guinea) have been attacked by this fish (again with changing details).
Some clear facts: pacus have powerful jaws, and are not wholly herbivorous. Some speculation. They might bite if threatened (i.e. when being netted by a fisherman). They might bite human extremities in general (fingers, penises, etc.) if short on food, although this seems extremely unlikely and has never actually been documented. Some additional sources: National Geographic post expressing skepticism, another National Geographic post quoting a skeptical authority. Plantdrew (talk) 18:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not true. I've added a section on this. There is enough reliable media sources discussing this and refuting it that I think it deserves a mention.

--Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I removed this section from the article since it is not actually a fact, and presumably the attention from the false news report has died down by now. The fact that pacu have been found in European waters is already noted elsewhere in the article. 186.105.68.227 (talk) 03:52, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In 2013, a pacu specimen was found by a fisherman in Denmark.[1] This led to media reports mistakenly warning that the fish could attack male testicles. The reports were based on a joke that was not meant to be taken seriously.[1]
Restored - it's a noteworthy misconception, per refs (and what originally brought me to the article to look up) - David Gerard (talk) 07:37, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The current section title "Incorrect claim..." may be too strong, as per: this article by The Telegraph and this one by Wired. "Disputed" or "Contested" claim maybe? ~ Alcmaeonid (talk) 16:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b Gray, Melissa (August 16, 2013). "Warning over testicle-biting fish in Denmark? It's all wet". CNN. Retrieved September 8, 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Oversimplified article[edit]

This article seems unnecessarily simplistic, and much information is omitted from the aquaria section, such as minimum recommended tank size. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.213.231.66 (talk) 00:42, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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