Do Not Mess With Fish 19

BATHERS BEWARE! Giant Catfish Terrorizes Swimmers at Berlin Lake, and you thought fish were fun! A number of German bathers in Berlin's Schlachtensee lake have been bitten by what is believed to be a giant catfish. Many are now apprehensive about escaping the summer heat with a dip.

bathers fleeing the pool,

After cooling off from the summer heat in one of Berlin's many lakes, a young German woman now has a 17-centimeter (6.7-inch) bite to show for it. Local animal experts suspect a giant catfish lies behind the attack and swimmers are now avoiding the lake out of fear of being bitten. "We were in the water and just swimming around," Katharina Saxe told television station Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) Monday. "Then (my friend) asked me if I'd felt it, too. And that's when it latched onto my leg. It felt like a bite. We bolted away. And then it started bleeding, too." Saxe was swimming in Schlachtensee, one of many small lakes around Berlin's Grunewald forested area, when the incident happened. She was taken to a hospital where she received minor treatment for a 17-centimeter-long (6.7 inch), crescent-shaped bite on her calf.

Jürgensen estimated that Schlachtensee has a dozen such fish. "It's right before their mating season now," Jürgensen said. "They're probably just marking their territory."

And it might turn out they're not that dangerous, either. "I got bit by one inadvertently one time," Holgate told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "You have to understand, though: Their teeth are more like sandpaper than real teeth. It didn't hurt at all." Holgate also said that, based upon his 20 years as a catfish expert, instances of catfish attacking humans are "extremely rare." "And if you do get bit," Holgate added, "your biggest danger is infection from the dirty water."