ANNOTATED LIST OF THE SPECIES 245 
Incredible numbers are found in small space, sometimes. Duguid (page 93) 
describes the taking of piranha on lines with numerous unbaited hooks. This is 
probably the weighted throwline described elsewhere. The Guiana Indians prefer 
to first concentrate their quarry by baiting, then to shoot arrows into the crowded 
waters. Paez asserts that they have a preference for red objects, even human 
victims clad in red. 
It appears from some accounts that at least not all the species of this subfamily 
are totally carnivorous. White from long years’ observation reports that they are 
fond of the seeds of citrus fruits; that they congregated about a citrate manufactory 
to devour the seed and pulp of limes thrown into the river. 
That such predators, whose extreme vigor and rapacity are expressed even in 
line and color, should be useful to man does not seem credible. But as a matter of 
fact they are rather favorite food fishes in many sections (Roosevelt, 300), and their 
provocative temperaments make them especially easy to take. Aside from food, 
there is another use to which primitive man has put them from time immemorial, 
and from Guiana to Peru, that is, the lower jaw is removed and used as standard 
equipment on every blowgun, being lashed to the weapon by a chambira-fiber cord. 
The hunter, at the last moment before dipping his dart into the poison, rings the 
point deeply between the piranha teeth so that it will break off in the wound and 
complete its mission. (Im Thurn, 137; White, 359; up de Graff; Waterton, 134, 
etc.) 
The Guarani of southwestern Brazil and Bolivia are said by Tolten (page 257), 
to employ the Jaws of piranha as trimmers for keeping the hair evened on the fore- 
head. It is reported further that when the first white-man’s scissors were shown 
these people, they gave them the name of the fish as the nearest synonym. 
A still more astonishing use of this fish subfamily is one reported by Paez 
(page 156). He says that among the inundated savannas about the mouth of the 
Orinoco, where for months inhumation of the dead is impossible, the caribe solves 
the problem. They quickly deflesh the corpse, the skeleton then is dyed, decorated, 
and placed in mortuary places of honor in the platform villages. 
The Carib term caribe is the source of the tribal name, and signifies cannibal, 
that is man-eating. But considerable contradictory information comes to us as to 
whether the fishes cannibalize upon their own kind. It has been my observation 
that they will turn as readily upon their own wounded as upon any other form, fish 
or otherwise. Lange reports feeding them fragments of the meat of their own kind 
as a form of sport. 
Little is known of the life-histories or of the younger stages of any species. 
Waterton (page 454) found their eggs among the roots of hanas which he definitely 
assigned to piraya. Hartt, a reliable observer, describes the nests of Pygocentrus 
as depressions fanned out in sand during flood stages, where the eggs were laid in a 
ball of two or three inches diameter. 
An excellent general account of the Serrasalmoninae comes from the pen of 
Beebe, 1917, Chapter X XIII; more recently we have a chapter on piranha in Cut- 
right’s “Great Naturalists Explore South America.”’ 
