Comments on: Vegetarian piranhas are the Amazon’s champion gardeners

By: Lychee

Lychee — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:53:49 +0000

“…some even end up 4 or 5 kilometres away…” Wow, amazing! Its a good business catching and selling those fishes and there SHOULD be a regulation for fixing that problem. I don’t know… 5 fishes max. per person or something…

By: Mike Shanahan

Mike Shanahan — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:52:32 +0000

4-5 kilometres may be a relatively long distance compared with seed dispersal by small birds and monkeys, but it is a good order of magnitude less than what we know large fruit bats can do. They can spread seeds 50-60 kilometres from their source tree (though only very small seeds).

By: Georg

Georg — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:43:24 +0000

it seems that seeds find it slightly easier to germinate after a voyage through the tambaqui’s innards.

There are seed in Europe (I think in the Americas as well) , which need a passage through a bird. This passage removes a cover from that seeds, which inhibits germination.

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:24:09 +0000

At least the shipping problem ought to be fixable, given a sufficiently large catapult. The Amazon basin in flood is a pretty big target.

But probably more helpful would be regulation against catching, selling, or buying pacus over a certain size.

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:06:15 +0000

If Brazil would like some Tambaquis back, we have plenty. I work in an independent tropical fish store and we get two or three requests per week to “take my Pacu, he’s outgrown my tank.” Big box pet merchants sell baby pacus for $5-$10 and don’t tell people about their eventual size and appetite. Most of these babies are farm grown in Indonesian ornamental-fish farms, but some are imported from Brazil.

So if there were a way to repatriate pacus after unwitting American aquarists have raised them to market size in their living rooms, we could solve two problems at once. Unfortunately, there are issues with rereleasing an aquarium-grown fish – potential introduction of exotic diseases into the wild, and putting fish into the human food chain that have been treated with antibiotics not suitable for food fish. And then there’s the cost of air freight, about $70 to move a box of water from Miami to Manaus, and that box will only hold 1 pacu.