Posted on 10/09/2008 8:23:19 AM PDT by walford
A FEARSOME mutant fish has started killing people after feeding on human corpses, scientists fear.
They reckon that a huge type of catfish, called a goonch, may have developed a taste for flesh in an Indian river where bodies are dumped after funerals.
Locals have believed for years that a mysterious monster lurks in the water. But they think it has moved on from scavenging to snatching unwary bathers who venture into the Great Kali, which flows along the India-Nepal border.
The extraordinary creature has been investigated by biologist Jeremy Wade for a TV documentary to be shown on Five.
He said: “The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses. It has perhaps got this taste for flesh by feasting on remains of funeral pyres. There will be a few freak individuals that grow bigger than the other ones and if you throw in extra food, they will grow even bigger.”
Jeremy discounted theories that crocodiles could be responsible for the carnage before turning his attention to goonches – among the world’s biggest freshwater fish.
Dragged
He caught one which tipped the scales at 161lb and was nearly 6ft long – a world record weight and far bigger than any landed before.
He said: “If that got hold of you, there’d be no getting away.
An 18-year-old Nepali disappeared in the river last year, dragged down by something described as like an “elongated pig”.
But the first victim of a goonch attack was thought to have been a 17-year-old Nepalese boy.
He was killed in April 1988 as he cooled himself in the river.
Witnesses said he was suddenly pulled below the surface.
Three months later a young boy was dragged underwater as his father watched helplessly.
Five’s Nature Shock series starts on October 14 and Flesh Eating River Monster is on October 21 at 8pm.
Guess what folks, we are still not so smart nor technologically advanced as to be exempt from Nature's Laws. If you create a food source, an organism will adapt to exploit it.
If you dump human flesh in sufficient quantities and with sufficient regularity in a place that is accessible to animals, you will genetically engineer a new predator. If you hunt down the predator, but still keep dumping bodies, a new one will emerge.
If you engage in behavior that makes it so an otherwise localized microbe will spread through the population, it will become an epidemic as you have genetically engineered a new plague. If you 'cure' the disease and resume the promiscuity, a new disease will emerge.
We still don't run things around here.
It's not Bush's fault?
Is this the same goonche who stole Christmas?
Just a little less in some cases than others.
“Guess what liberals, we are still not so smart nor technologically advanced as to be exempt from Nature’s Laws. If you create a new government program, an interest group will adapt to exploit it.
If you dump money in sufficient quantities and with sufficient regularity in a place that is accessible to freeloaders, you will genetically engineer a new dependent person. If you hunt down the freeloaders, but still keep dumping money, a new one will emerge.
If you engage in behavior that makes it so an otherwise localized microbe will spread through the population, it will become an epidemic as you have genetically engineered a new plague. If you ‘cure’ the disease and resume the promiscuity, a new disease will emerge.
We still don’t run things around here.”
They caught it!
Wasn’t the Kali the human sacrifice God in the Beatle’s movie “Help”?
I would think the human waste sewage in most Indian rivers would kill you first before a giant fish.
Do I REALLY need to post the obligatory picture?
If ever there was a thread that cried out for a pic of Helen Thomas or Janet Reno, this is it.
Even so, please resist the urge. It would be The Wrong Thing To Do.
You read my mind
Crypto ping?
“You will get more of whatever you subsidize.”
That’s damn near a universal law.
Do they taste like pork?
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