River Monsters (2009) s01e01 Episode Script
Piranha
Piranha.
Legends tell of the most ferocious fish in the 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.
had been 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've found says that piranhas don't kill people.
So are these stories real, or are they just over-exaggerated urban myths? I've travelled 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.
Can piranhas really kill and eat a human? Are they the bloodthirsty killers from the movies that fill our nightmares? I visit 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 fisherman'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 there.
There's such a variety of fish here.
Scientists have determined that there are some 60 different species in the piranha sub-family.
Yet the majority of them are actually vegetarian.
It is the flesh-eating behaviour 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.
An 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.
They thought he had gone to take a bath or something, but he was nowhere in sight.
They searched, they searched, eventually they found just his skeleton, 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 going to 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.
A fifth 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.
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's 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, 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 there's probably some very precise engineering going on 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 on to 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.
A tried and tested means of catching piranha.
Just a hook on the end with a piece of wire, so they don't chomp through the line.
A 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.
A red-belly 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 jaw bone 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.
It 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 they're hungry? Welcome to my piranha pool.
Here at a local hotel, just like my favourite 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.
I'm just wondering if piranhas have the same kind of sensitivity to blood.
I've got a hook here.
There's one way to find out.
Sacrifice a bit of my own blood.
And take it from there.
It's only a single drop.
But if reputations are to be believed, they'll have my thumb off in a matter of seconds.
I don't know.
I think that's possibly a bit inconclusive.
They are moving, but that could just be the movement of my thumb.
Maybe a little drop like that was a bit ambitious and perhaps I need a slightly larger quantity.
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.
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.
I think it's 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 he goes.
The first nibble, the first nibble, the first nibble.
And now they're all piling in.
Once the first one started, there we go, they're all over it now.
Piranhas react to the sound and movement of another piranha feeding.
Attracting them to the scene and inciting 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 want 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're just not interested in me.
So what is it that turns piranhas into vicious, murderous killers? That is what I want to try to 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.
The 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 track 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 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 travelling 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 Araújo.
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 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.
And he's basically saying that 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 actually saw this boy's foot disappearing out of the bus.
And he saw the foot, followed it, and 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.
He actually had to kick this person's hand off to get free from the bus, and actually 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 have 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.
But he said lots of cases - two, three people from the same family died in this accident.
Most of the bodies were recognisable.
But there was one, he said, that There was one body there had literally been stripped of all the flesh.
Only the boots were left.
Just everything else gone.
The man was later identified as Almandino Franza.
I met his brother, Mabio, who has a theory as to what happened.
He was wearing sort of quite strong clothing.
And he reckons that part of the clothing somehow got snagged on the bus, and possibly that's why he didn't escape.
He only actually identified him because he had his identity document inside the pocket of his shirt.
The body of his brother was wrapped by then.
He picked the body up and he said, well, you know, it was just so light.
You could just tell, even though he couldn't see You could just tell that it was just bones there.
So he's saying that, you know, this would have been piranha that did this.
Basically just stripped the flesh from the body.
There's lots of them there.
It's well known.
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 de Barbosa 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 realise 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'd just actually started her nurse training at the time, and so she actually went to the river at the site of the accident.
Hmm.
That's pretty tragic.
Dora says yeah, 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 he was just his face was completely eaten away down to not down to the bone, but down to cartilage.
And also a lad called Ivan whom she liked very much.
This was her childhood sweetheart, and he was one of the victims as well.
And she says, because of this, she found it very difficult early on to talk about this business.
But, um as a result of this, she says she actually 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.
However, I have uncovered a situation in the east of the Amazon where at the end of the dry season of 2005, eight piranha attacks occurred in just one weekend on one beach.
And these victims were definitely alive when the piranhas struck.
The myth of the piranha in the outside world really started with President Teddy Roosevelt, who travelled to the Amazon and then wrote a book about his experiences.
And he described the piranha as the most ferocious fish in the world.
He said that even a finger trailed incautiously in the water would get snapped off, and they'd attack swimmers, and all sorts of things like that.
Since then, the myth has really grown and grown.
After Jaws, the film about sharks, there was a Hollywood blockbuster about Piranhas, with the immortal line, "They're here, and they're hungry.
" I've heard some horrific stories that are absolutely believable.
But lately, people have actually started to question all this, and say it's just over-hyped fishermen's tales.
Indeed, I've just swum in a pool full of hungry piranhas, without suffering a single bite.
So, what is the truth? Are they the bloodthirsty killers of myth, or is the truth a little bit more complicated? 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 animals that are trying to survive in the wild.
And 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 fuelled 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 1,000 miles from the sea, most people would not expect to be a victim.
Yet on the weekend of December the 21 st, 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.
So I've got some liver for bait.
Loads of blood, but that's perfect for piranhas.
So I'm using a pretty big hook.
And above the hook, I've got some wire, because otherwise they'll just chomp through the line.
Pretty ghoulish feast, but just the kind of thing a piranha would like.
Here we go, there's a knock, there's something on there.
Right, here we go, here we go.
Here we go! That that's a sizeable 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 here 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.
I mean, that would take a serious-sized lump out of you.
Literally, the size of that jaw, that would be the size of the hole that would 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.
Piranhas 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 who happens to tread on to the nest of a piranha, where there's a big male defending its eggs, is definitely going to be susceptible to getting a bite.
The beach attacks occurred when there were most people in the water, on the hottest days at 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 actually involved in a study recently, looking at the reasons for shoaling behaviour 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 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.
What else could be down there that could be even fiercer, even more carnivorous than the flesh-eating piranha? No! 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'd have thought it? A thousand miles from the ocean, right up the Amazon river freshwater dolphins.
And these guys I mean, they're having fun now, but my goodness, they've also got a dark side.
We're in the middle of a frenzy! That one got my thumb.
That one got my thumb.
Oh, dear.
Hey! And these are the guys that take out piranhas.
A 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 an echo echolocational 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 Ooooh! using sonar.
Ooh.
Ooh-ooh You know, you've got to be very, very careful tangling with these creatures.
Ah! 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 pay 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 armoured catfish was a fantastic catch.
But seeing the piranha bite on its back has crystallised 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 travelled back to their home town.
Their lives were never meant to cross with piranhas.
Yet for thousands of people on 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.
So, I was just walking along here, and I asked this gentleman, "I'm after stories about piranhas.
Anybody got anything to tell me?" He says, "Well, you know I had the end of my nose taken off by one.
" His wife dropped something in the water.
He just dived down, water about waist deep, and a piranha had the end off his nose.
He says he opened his eyes and saw lots of blood and many piranhas.
And if he hadn't been able to leap straight out of the water, he fears he might have died.
Amazing.
I've already found someone who has experienced the sharp end of the piranha population.
Let's see what kind of piranhas they have here, and just how quickly they bite.
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 he goes.
Red belly.
There we go.
Whoop! Now, right you can see why people I couldn't do that without shoes on.
You can see why so many people here are missing bits out of their toes.
Every one of these is a red belly.
This one's got slight spots on it as well.
That just means it's a juvenile.
Again, again, here we go.
There is 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 skeletonising 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 I'm just a little bit of movement to start them homing in.
They're in there.
They're in there already.
I just saw a flash of silver, with that very distinctive red as well.
Now they're starting to arrive.
Once one finds it, 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.
Ohh! 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 the backbone gone and 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.
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.
The water leaves the backwaters and all the little fish are swimming out.
And basically the piranhas are there, feeding on the small fish.
So there's a concentration of piranhas, and that is when the people have to take extra care.
You can't even get in the water to have a wash.
Main food item here is fish, so there you are.
You have to clean the fish to prepare it for the meal.
And just the smell of that will bring a concentration of piranhas there, so you've 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.
They're saying, you can't look after kids all the time.
His wife was cleaning 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, 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 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 retrieve the child, even while this was going on, and eventually, he said, all they got in were bones.
When I asked how long it took, he said, "No, this happened very rapidly, because there are just so many piranhas here.
" This is what I've been searching for.
A first-hand account of piranhas attacking, killing and eating a human.
In this case, a three-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 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? I'm just trying to imagine what it's like living in a small house on top of water, and you've got ten children, just running here, there and everywhere like children do.
And how on earth do you do you keep an eye on them? Because literally they're over the edge, and potentially, this time of year, within seconds, they are You know, they've had it.
How do you live like that? These lads are just they're just balancing on pieces of wood about that wide.
And 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.
You know, I guess, like a lot of things 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 precautions that you take.
You can't think about it all the time.
Or you 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 was justified.
I 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 matter what, the piranha will continue to evoke fear and horror in each and every one of us.
Legends tell of the most ferocious fish in the 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.
had been 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've found says that piranhas don't kill people.
So are these stories real, or are they just over-exaggerated urban myths? I've travelled 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.
Can piranhas really kill and eat a human? Are they the bloodthirsty killers from the movies that fill our nightmares? I visit 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 fisherman'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 there.
There's such a variety of fish here.
Scientists have determined that there are some 60 different species in the piranha sub-family.
Yet the majority of them are actually vegetarian.
It is the flesh-eating behaviour 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.
An 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.
They thought he had gone to take a bath or something, but he was nowhere in sight.
They searched, they searched, eventually they found just his skeleton, 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 going to 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.
A fifth 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.
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's 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, 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 there's probably some very precise engineering going on 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 on to 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.
A tried and tested means of catching piranha.
Just a hook on the end with a piece of wire, so they don't chomp through the line.
A 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.
A red-belly 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 jaw bone 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.
It 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 they're hungry? Welcome to my piranha pool.
Here at a local hotel, just like my favourite 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.
I'm just wondering if piranhas have the same kind of sensitivity to blood.
I've got a hook here.
There's one way to find out.
Sacrifice a bit of my own blood.
And take it from there.
It's only a single drop.
But if reputations are to be believed, they'll have my thumb off in a matter of seconds.
I don't know.
I think that's possibly a bit inconclusive.
They are moving, but that could just be the movement of my thumb.
Maybe a little drop like that was a bit ambitious and perhaps I need a slightly larger quantity.
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.
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.
I think it's 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 he goes.
The first nibble, the first nibble, the first nibble.
And now they're all piling in.
Once the first one started, there we go, they're all over it now.
Piranhas react to the sound and movement of another piranha feeding.
Attracting them to the scene and inciting 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 want 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're just not interested in me.
So what is it that turns piranhas into vicious, murderous killers? That is what I want to try to 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.
The 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 track 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 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 travelling 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 Araújo.
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 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.
And he's basically saying that 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 actually saw this boy's foot disappearing out of the bus.
And he saw the foot, followed it, and 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.
He actually had to kick this person's hand off to get free from the bus, and actually 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 have 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.
But he said lots of cases - two, three people from the same family died in this accident.
Most of the bodies were recognisable.
But there was one, he said, that There was one body there had literally been stripped of all the flesh.
Only the boots were left.
Just everything else gone.
The man was later identified as Almandino Franza.
I met his brother, Mabio, who has a theory as to what happened.
He was wearing sort of quite strong clothing.
And he reckons that part of the clothing somehow got snagged on the bus, and possibly that's why he didn't escape.
He only actually identified him because he had his identity document inside the pocket of his shirt.
The body of his brother was wrapped by then.
He picked the body up and he said, well, you know, it was just so light.
You could just tell, even though he couldn't see You could just tell that it was just bones there.
So he's saying that, you know, this would have been piranha that did this.
Basically just stripped the flesh from the body.
There's lots of them there.
It's well known.
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 de Barbosa 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 realise 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'd just actually started her nurse training at the time, and so she actually went to the river at the site of the accident.
Hmm.
That's pretty tragic.
Dora says yeah, 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 he was just his face was completely eaten away down to not down to the bone, but down to cartilage.
And also a lad called Ivan whom she liked very much.
This was her childhood sweetheart, and he was one of the victims as well.
And she says, because of this, she found it very difficult early on to talk about this business.
But, um as a result of this, she says she actually 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.
However, I have uncovered a situation in the east of the Amazon where at the end of the dry season of 2005, eight piranha attacks occurred in just one weekend on one beach.
And these victims were definitely alive when the piranhas struck.
The myth of the piranha in the outside world really started with President Teddy Roosevelt, who travelled to the Amazon and then wrote a book about his experiences.
And he described the piranha as the most ferocious fish in the world.
He said that even a finger trailed incautiously in the water would get snapped off, and they'd attack swimmers, and all sorts of things like that.
Since then, the myth has really grown and grown.
After Jaws, the film about sharks, there was a Hollywood blockbuster about Piranhas, with the immortal line, "They're here, and they're hungry.
" I've heard some horrific stories that are absolutely believable.
But lately, people have actually started to question all this, and say it's just over-hyped fishermen's tales.
Indeed, I've just swum in a pool full of hungry piranhas, without suffering a single bite.
So, what is the truth? Are they the bloodthirsty killers of myth, or is the truth a little bit more complicated? 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 animals that are trying to survive in the wild.
And 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 fuelled 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 1,000 miles from the sea, most people would not expect to be a victim.
Yet on the weekend of December the 21 st, 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.
So I've got some liver for bait.
Loads of blood, but that's perfect for piranhas.
So I'm using a pretty big hook.
And above the hook, I've got some wire, because otherwise they'll just chomp through the line.
Pretty ghoulish feast, but just the kind of thing a piranha would like.
Here we go, there's a knock, there's something on there.
Right, here we go, here we go.
Here we go! That that's a sizeable 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 here 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.
I mean, that would take a serious-sized lump out of you.
Literally, the size of that jaw, that would be the size of the hole that would 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.
Piranhas 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 who happens to tread on to the nest of a piranha, where there's a big male defending its eggs, is definitely going to be susceptible to getting a bite.
The beach attacks occurred when there were most people in the water, on the hottest days at 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 actually involved in a study recently, looking at the reasons for shoaling behaviour 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 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.
What else could be down there that could be even fiercer, even more carnivorous than the flesh-eating piranha? No! 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'd have thought it? A thousand miles from the ocean, right up the Amazon river freshwater dolphins.
And these guys I mean, they're having fun now, but my goodness, they've also got a dark side.
We're in the middle of a frenzy! That one got my thumb.
That one got my thumb.
Oh, dear.
Hey! And these are the guys that take out piranhas.
A 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 an echo echolocational 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 Ooooh! using sonar.
Ooh.
Ooh-ooh You know, you've got to be very, very careful tangling with these creatures.
Ah! 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 pay 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 armoured catfish was a fantastic catch.
But seeing the piranha bite on its back has crystallised 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 travelled back to their home town.
Their lives were never meant to cross with piranhas.
Yet for thousands of people on 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.
So, I was just walking along here, and I asked this gentleman, "I'm after stories about piranhas.
Anybody got anything to tell me?" He says, "Well, you know I had the end of my nose taken off by one.
" His wife dropped something in the water.
He just dived down, water about waist deep, and a piranha had the end off his nose.
He says he opened his eyes and saw lots of blood and many piranhas.
And if he hadn't been able to leap straight out of the water, he fears he might have died.
Amazing.
I've already found someone who has experienced the sharp end of the piranha population.
Let's see what kind of piranhas they have here, and just how quickly they bite.
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 he goes.
Red belly.
There we go.
Whoop! Now, right you can see why people I couldn't do that without shoes on.
You can see why so many people here are missing bits out of their toes.
Every one of these is a red belly.
This one's got slight spots on it as well.
That just means it's a juvenile.
Again, again, here we go.
There is 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 skeletonising 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 I'm just a little bit of movement to start them homing in.
They're in there.
They're in there already.
I just saw a flash of silver, with that very distinctive red as well.
Now they're starting to arrive.
Once one finds it, 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.
Ohh! 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 the backbone gone and 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.
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.
The water leaves the backwaters and all the little fish are swimming out.
And basically the piranhas are there, feeding on the small fish.
So there's a concentration of piranhas, and that is when the people have to take extra care.
You can't even get in the water to have a wash.
Main food item here is fish, so there you are.
You have to clean the fish to prepare it for the meal.
And just the smell of that will bring a concentration of piranhas there, so you've 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.
They're saying, you can't look after kids all the time.
His wife was cleaning 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, 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 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 retrieve the child, even while this was going on, and eventually, he said, all they got in were bones.
When I asked how long it took, he said, "No, this happened very rapidly, because there are just so many piranhas here.
" This is what I've been searching for.
A first-hand account of piranhas attacking, killing and eating a human.
In this case, a three-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 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? I'm just trying to imagine what it's like living in a small house on top of water, and you've got ten children, just running here, there and everywhere like children do.
And how on earth do you do you keep an eye on them? Because literally they're over the edge, and potentially, this time of year, within seconds, they are You know, they've had it.
How do you live like that? These lads are just they're just balancing on pieces of wood about that wide.
And 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.
You know, I guess, like a lot of things 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 precautions that you take.
You can't think about it all the time.
Or you 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 was justified.
I 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 matter what, the piranha will continue to evoke fear and horror in each and every one of us.