Boy catches fish with human-like teeth in pond

Janna Clinton was sitting on her back porch watching her son Charlie, 11, fish in a pond behind their house in Oklahoma when he suddenly started yelling for her.

“He was screaming, ‘Oh my God, mom! Oh my God!’ Clinton said.

“I thought he was just being dramatic, to be honest,” she added.

Then she got a close look at Charlie’s alarmingly weird catch.

“Obviously being in a neighbourhood pond, we’re used to just catching a few bass or catfish,” she said. “I mean, nothing with human-like teeth.”

It turned out that Charlie had landed a pacu, a fish that’s a cousin of the piranha — and whose outsized teeth have long struck fear in swimmers.

The pacu is a native of South America, but this one was swimming in a small pond in the Clintons’ suburb north of Oklahoma City.

“He said it put up a heck of a fight,” Clinton noted, saying her son reeled the fish in on his own. “He was the only one down there fishing and he did a great job.”

The Clintons posted a photo of the unusual fish to their neighbourhood Facebook page and got in touch with a game warden. But before learning of its provenance, they returned the pacu to the water.

“It’s a catch and release pond,” Clinton said, “so we unfortunately did release it back because we didn’t know any better at the time.”