The funny thing here is that piranhas rarely eat meat. They are opportunistic scavengers. A friend who works with piranhas was telling me that speaking to the cops and fishermen in Manaus, Brazil, they feel that piranha bitten human bodies removed from the river were long dead when the fish found them.
Voraciously stripped to the bones, like in the movies? Nope. Little chunks, not to be too graphic.
I can't tell you how many fish I've seen with piranha bites on their fins, or skin. That's their food - fins, scales, fish muscle. If a cow overdoses and falls into the river, they'll have a go. Once it's ready.
I've watched video of divers in the middle of shoals of piranha. Big piranha. There have been no attacks in the videos. If the divers had been bleeding heavily, then there would be a danger. But I call urban legend, propagated by a few early fish-hunting explorers who wanted a little spice in their stories. A piranha in a tank can take your finger off. Cooped up, they are nasty beasts, and I hate dealing with them. But meat eaters?
Not serious info. The proverbial cows that they strip to the bone in minutes are rare in the Amazonian jungle, and if leaping piranhas looking for mammal meat took them down when they went for a drink where the forest has been cut down, there'd be less deforestation for cattle farming to worry about.
