Man-eating predators have always been part of legend and folk-lore. But here we have news of a real-life monster, interested in only one part of the human anatomy – the testicles.

The monster in question is in fact a 40lb fish called Pacu, found in the waters of Papua New Guinea. The Pacu are notorious for having eaten up the testicles of swimmers and anglers caught unawares, leaving them to bleed to death. This has led to the creatures being nicknamed ‘Ball Cutter’ fish. Initially, the villagers could only describe the monster-fish as something mysterious, like a ‘human in the water’. They finally got to see the predator up-close when a Pacu fish was recently caught by Jeremy Wade, a 53-year old British Fisherman, as a part of his TV series called River Monsters. The muscular fish was hard to catch, but Wade managed to track it down, reel it into his boat and wrestle it into submition. When he opened its jaws up with his hands, the teeth of the Pacu were found to be quite similar to human ones.

Photo via MySpace

The Pacu fish are actually native to the Amazon, and were introduced to Papua New Guinea only about 15 years ago. Traditionally vegetarian, the fish used their molar-like sharp teeth to crack open nuts (no pun intended) and seeds. When veggie food wasn’t available in their new surroundings, they had to resort to eating meat. I suppose this is when they discovered a particular liking towards the meat of human testicles.

All we can say is that if you ever happen to be swimming or fishing in the rivers of Papua New Guinea, be sure to guard those family jewels!

via Discovery