Monday, October 13, 2008

Mysterious fish said to eat people in India

It's called a goonch, and it's a catfish that can get really big and is said to be eating people in India and Nepal.

The story is strange. The goonch probably started down the path of eating people by scavenging bodies disposed in rivers in the area, a common practice apparently. Now, some mysterious cases of disappearing people are attributed to a goonch pulling them underwater and eating them.

This is no run-of-the-mill catfish, they're BIG. They can get to be 200 pounds and they are certainly capable of pulling a person underwater. In one case of a disappearing Nepali boy, he was said to be pulled underwater by "an elongated pig." I suppose a goonch could be described as an elongated pig (see photo above).

The goonch that ate people, sounds like a Dr. Seuss book.

Hat tip: zooillogix

7 comments:

Theresa said...

That's gross.

Anonymous said...

Thats a big fish but doesn`t looks like a pig by far.Oh well nvm great post thx,keep up the good work

Jolene Costanzo

blogbum said...

Hey I first heard about this on the History channel. The show was called "Monster Quest." Nice post.

Mister Allred said...

That is without-a-doubt the biggest catfish I have ever seen.

Chris said...

I guess thats one place you don't want to go swimming.

Izzy said...

Interesting! I wonder if the whole "eating people" thing is more of an accident, like they happen to just suck them in or something. I read once that some groupers can actually suck scuba divers in if you get too close.

Anonymous said...

I would guess that they were defending a nest. On River Monsters it said the attacks were in slow moving pools of the river. Also the attacks were in April which is prime spawing time for a long list of northern hemisphere freshwater fish.