Eh? Title get your attention? Oh, it’s real my friends. And it’s coming for your testicles.

Turns out they’ve found a couple of pacu in a lake in Illinois, most likely discarded pets. Pacu are related to piranha, but “much larger” and have “straighter teeth like a human”.

Very well, but where do the testicles come in? Turns out the pacu has previously been introduced in Papa New Guinea:

There, according to British fisherman Jeremy Wade, the pacu is known as the “ball cutter.” In 2011, Wade said locals informed him that two fisherman had died from blood loss after something in the water had bitten off their testicles.

“The locals told me that this thing was like a human in the water, biting at the testicles of fishermen,” Wade said.

You know, biting at the testicles of fishermen, like a human.

Maybe it’s because in the wild, pacu eat nuts (literally and figuratively it seems). Maybe it’s because fish don’t like fishermen, and pacu have the teeth to do something about it. Maybe it’s because people of Papa New Guinea fish pants-less, and pacu find this offensive. Or maybe they’re just mimicking humans, because apparently that’s what humans do to fishermen in Papa New Guinea. Who knows.

But what I do know is that if you’re planning to come swimming in my neck of the woods, gird your loins my friends. Gird your loins.