At first I was like, “Um…my scientific research leads me to conclude that swimming with piranhas will lead to dying from a million little piranha bites and is therefore not good for my health and so I say no to Death by Piranha.” Then I realized that what I’d misremembered as ”scientific research” was actually that one time when I rented this shit-tastic movie from the ’70s called Piranha. So then I was like, “Hmmm…This seems like a job for the Internets,” and I did some more research with the result that FORGET EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT PIRANHA. For example, you may be surprised to learn that piranhas hardly ever attack people — although, sure, they do bite swimmers occasionally — but there is no record of a single person being killed and eaten by piranha (if you drown or die in piranha-infested water, though, that’s on YOU. Because they will pick your corpse to the bone). In fact, people who live near the South American rivers where piranha are found routinely swim in those waters. Also, according to a recent study, piranhas subsist mostly on plants, insects and fish — including other piranha. Apparently the whole piranhas-are-hysterical-murder-monsters started in 1913, when some native Brazilians staged a piranha attack to put on a little show for visiting U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt (they netted off a stretch of river, filled it with piranha, starved them until Roosevelt was watching and then tossed a cow corpse into the water, thus setting off a feeding frenzy.) Knowing what I know now, I have to say yes to this dare. I would swim as fast as I could and focus on the million bucks the whole time. It’s a simple trade: bites for dollars. Sounds fair to me.
