Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
Pacu uses its teeth mainly to crush nuts and fruits, but sometimes they also eat other fish and invertebrates. They usually eat floating fruits and nuts that drop from trees in the Amazon.
If your anything like me then you think fish are a bit creepy looking. Well the average fish has got nothing on these two below when it comes to creepyness.
The Pacu and the Sheepshead fish are both highly unusual in that their teeth look a bit like human teeth. These guys are the stuff of nightmares.
Pacu is a South American freshwater fish found in most rivers and streams in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins of lowland Amazonia, but they have also been reported as far as Papua New Guinea.
Pacu is related to the meat-eating piranha, both sharing the same subfamily Serrasalminae, although they have different food habits.
The piranha is a carnivorous species while the pacu is omnivorous with vegetative tendencies.
The difference is evident in the structure of their teeth. Piranha have pointed, razor-sharp teeth whereas pacu have squarer, straighter teeth, that eerily resemble those of humans.
Mmm, looks tasty.
The Pacu fish when it isn’t flashing its pearly whites at us.
Aside from pacu there is another fish with very odd looking teeth. The Sheepshead fish also has “human” teeth but a little too many.
A fully-grown adult sheepshead has well-defined incisors sitting at the front of the jaw, and molars set in three rows in the upper jaw and two rows in the lower jaw.
Sheepshead fish are also called convict fish due to the black and white bands that run down its silvery body.
