No it wasn't an escapee from some crazy Soviet-era bioweapons lab, but rather an aquarium fish someone apparently dumped in the river. According to Russia's Itar-Tass news agency, piranhas are a popular aquarium fish in Russia, but scientists from a regional university told residents along the river not to worry, the waters of the Ob River are too cold for the piranhas to breed.
I'm kind of surprised by this story, since it just so happens that in college I had a friend who had a pet piranha. And despite their fearsome looks (and up-close they do look pretty fearsome), piranhas are pretty delicate fish, use to very warm waters (they do come from the Amazon), so forget breeding, I'm surprised the poor fish was even alive and swimming in the Ob - winter didn't end all that long ago in Siberia, and I can't imagine the Ob has warmed up a lot yet.
But amazingly, according to Itar-Tass, this isn't the first time this year that a Russian fisherman has caught a piranha; another was caught in a reservoir in the Kemerovo region in April.
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