Piranhas have the strongest bite force of any fish, with black piranhas having a force more than 30 times their body weight.
This means they’re able to easily tear flesh from their prey – which is most likely to be an injured fish, rather than anything as large as a human.
- Pound for pound, this little fish has the most savage, brutal bite ever measured – way stronger than a great white
- Can piranhas actually kill a human?
One of the most infamous species of piranhas swims through the Pantanal wetlands, in Brazil: the red-bellied piranha.
- It’s bigger than Florida, straddles 3 countries and is home to a snake as long as a great white shark
- It's home to the largest concentration of crocodiles on the planet – 10 million of these ferocious reptiles to be precise. Swimming here is inadvisable...
It has the strongest jaws and sharpest teeth of the piranha family, and hunts in groups that can reach more than 100.
Piranhas generally spread out to look for prey, and when it’s located, the attacking scout signals the other piranhas to join. Every fish rushes in to take a bite, then swims away to allow others to do the same, creating what looks like a ‘feeding frenzy’.
And as David Attenborough narrates in footage from Planet Earth, “piranha can strip a fish to the bone in minutes”.
Top image: a still from a video of a piranha shoal feeding on a dorado fish. Credit: BBC Natural History/Getty Images
