10.
Largetooth Sawfish The largetooth sawfish is just as terrifying
as it sounds.
It's a type of ray that has a snout, kind of like the end of a chainsaw.
Its snout is called a rostrum, and it’s used for two very important things.
It’s for hunting and for detecting electric fields.
The largetooth sawfish is a massive predator and about as fierce as a miniature shark.
But the giant saw on the end of its face is one of the most unique biological marvels
in the world.
It has thousands of tiny organs working together to activate the animal’s sixth sense, detecting
the invisible electric field emitted by all living organisms.
Everything emits a small bit of electricity.
And the largetooth sawfish can sense that electricity like a visible aura.
Scientists call it “distant touch.”
The fish doesn't rely on sight or sound but sees the world through this almost magical
sensory ability.
The other thing it uses its snout for is hunting.
It dismembers and kills its prey.
It thrashes its rostrum back and forth in saw-like motions to stun, kill and cut its
victims into nice, digestible pieces.
It also uses the chainsaw on its head to fight off potential predators, things like sharks
and saltwater crocodiles.
This river monster is huge.
An adult sawfish can be over 20 feet (6m) long, and they live for about 35 years.
They used to live throughout the entire world, anywhere that there are lakes and rivers.
But since they've become critically endangered, the sawfish has much fewer numbers than even
just 100 years ago.
9.
South African Crocodile Crocodiles in South Africa are some of the
most dangerous river beasts you will hopefully never encounter.
There are not a lot of things more terrifying than just trying to cross a river in this
African nation.
Take the recent story of Mavis Mohlala, for example.
She was on her way to a church service in the province of Limpopo, close to the border
of Botswana and Zimbabwe when she came across a river crocodile.
The woman had to cross the Lepelle River at 7:00 p.m. to get to her church.
According to eyewitnesses, Mavis was almost at the end of the river crossing when she
shouted for help.
When her friends looked, they saw a crocodile had dragged her backwards into the river.
The woman's friends caught the crocodile just in time and poked it in the eyeball, causing
it to give up on Mavis and swim away.
But even after just a few seconds of being chewed on by that crocodile, the attack badly
injured her.
The poor woman struggled to survive for nearly five long days before sadly dying from her
injuries.
Even though authorities aren't 100% sure what kind of crocodile attacked Mavis, they believe
it was probably a Nile crocodile.
That’s the biggest croc in all of Africa.
According to National Geographic, these crocodiles kill roughly 200 people a year.
And at the time of Mavis’s death in 2019, the Nile crocodiles had already killed 48
other people that year in Africa.
8.
The White River Monster There’s an old Native American legend that
speaks of a bizarre creature lurking in the depths of the White River in Arkansas.
It’s called the White River monster and locals are so convinced it’s real that the
legislature made it illegal to kill or harm the creature in any way.
Residents of the area know the beast simply as Whitey, and it's been part of the White
River for over 150 years.
The legend started with the Quapaw Indians, who claimed Whitey overturned a warrior’s
canoe, then sank back into the depths of the river and vanished.
And in the days of the Civil War, local historians even credited the monster with flipping over
a Confederate gunship.
But is there any truth to these tales?
It's supposedly over 30 feet (9m) long with a spiny backbone, like a river serpent.
It's also said to make loud, bellowing sounds.
One biologist suggested the creature could have been a lost elephant seal seen by farmers
and fishermen in the early 1930s.
Others believe the creature, which nobody has seen in the last few years, died when
the water levels started dropping and the river became too shallow for it to live in.
But the truth is, there’s no solid evidence to suggest the White River Monster really
exists.
There’s also no solid evidence to suggest that it doesn’t.
7.
The Florida Arapaima Florida beachgoers recently discovered the
most dangerous river fish in all the Amazon jungle dead in Florida.
They found the rotting corpse of an arapaima, washed up on a Florida beach.
Authorities are now concerned that this gigantic, nearly unstoppable fish has joined the list
of invasive species already plaguing the state.
Even though this fish can thrive in Florida’s warm waters, the native fish might not fare
as well.
These things can grow to be 440 pounds (200kg).
They have endless appetites, and they can eat whatever they want.
That's bad news for Florida’s natural wildlife, already having to contend with invasive snakes,
spiders, and now Amazonian river monsters.
Aquatic ecologist Solomon David says it might be nothing to worry about.
He says arapaima requires very specific parameters to breed.
They don't reach their sexual maturity until five feet (1.5m), which happens after about
five years.
And they will only breed in specific areas.
This means there probably isn't a large population of them.
The one that was found beached had probably been an exotic pet that got thrown into the
river.
Sad, but it happens.
Hopefully, it doesn't happen too often or the arapaima population could explode.
These fish are also pretty dangerous to people, so heavy and such swift swimmers they can
headbutt a person and make their heart stop.
Getting hit by an arapaima is like getting hit by a wrecking ball.
6.
Goliath Tigerfish The goliath tigerfish is one of the meanest-looking
river monsters anywhere.
They have ice picks for teeth.
You could also call them huge spiked daggers.
Their teeth are massive and deadly.
And to make the fish even more terrifying, it can grow to be as big as a human.
But the goliath tigerfish’s bite is way stronger than that of a person, and their
teeth are about the size of eagle talons.
These fish are not enemies you want to mess with.
The goliath tigerfish has a distinct reputation among fishermen.
They're notorious for ripping chunks out of people who try to pull them out of the river,
making them unpopular with anglers.
You can find the goliath only in Africa.
Nowhere else in the world do they breed except in the lakes and rivers of the Congo River
Basin.
They're known to the locals for being incredibly aggressive, so aggressive they have a kind
of supernatural status in the community.
There are all kinds of legends about the goliath tigerfish, with one of the main myths having
to do with an evil spirit.
In some of the Congolese cultures, they say a malicious entity that forces it to attack
anyone who gets too close possesses the goliath tigerfish.
They also believe that if you see one of these fish at the beginning of a voyage, you’re
going to have terrible luck.
If there was an evil spirit that possessed one sea creature that you knew, which one
would it be?
Let me know which animal you think is the evilest in the comments and don't forget to
subscribe before the end of the video!
5.
The Megapiranha There was once a gigantic piranha living in
the rivers of the Amazon, about three times bigger than the modern piranhas.
And that's saying something considering modern piranhas are so big and so vicious they can
bite people's hands off!
But what I'm talking about is the Megapiranha, a fish that may have had the strongest bite
of any sea creature in history relative to its size.
Justin Grubich from American University says both the Megapiranha and its living relatives
have stronger bites than even the megalodon.
That means, pound for pound, the Megapiranha and its tiny piranha relatives are some seriously
fierce biters.
But it is long gone.
It lived roughly 5 million years ago in Argentina, first discovered by paleontologists back in
2009.
Paleontologists have only found one part of the great beast’s upper jaw.
Just one fossil, yet still enough to put together a clear picture of what the creature might
have looked like.
It was a true river monster, with serrated triangular teeth used to rip the flesh of
its enemies and terrorize the prehistoric jungle rivers.
4.
Wild Otters When you think about river monsters, you think
about creatures with big teeth and slimy bodies.
But some river monsters are adorable yet deadly.
For example, wild river otters are some of the most dangerous animals that you can encounter
in the state of Florida.
They can rip you apart!
In 2018, a 77-year-old woman found this out the hard way.
One of these creatures attacked her, and it bit off a piece of her ear like an aquatic
Mike Tyson.
The victim, Sue Spector, was paddling up the Braden River with some friends and a guide.
The otter jumped onto the front of her kayak.
She was pleased to see the little guy, and then it climbed up her back and started scratching
at her face with its huge, sharp claws.
What started as a cute nature encounter turned into a scene of chaos and desperation.
The angry otter ripped off a piece of her ear, scratched her face into a bloody mess,
and left everybody shaken.
Even though the otter let her go, Sue wasn’t out of the woods yet.
One kayaker looked behind them and realized the otter was making a second approach.
It wasn't done and was still out for blood!
The kayakers had to go as quickly as they could back to the shore, where Sue had to
get transported to the hospital.
She was okay, but everyone else in the group was terrified of getting back in their kayaks.
3.
Australian Crocodiles South African crocodiles are pretty terrifying,
the great Nile crocs who kill hundreds of people per year.
But there's no crocodile on Earth, quite as terrifying as the Australian saltwater crocodile.
These beastly reptiles can grow 23 feet (7m) long and often weigh in at over one ton.
They’re typical throughout all of Australia’s tropical north, living in just about every
muddy river and every body of water.
It should come as no surprise that Australians who go camping out in this deadly wilderness
often find themselves victims of crocodile attacks.
That's what happened in 2013 when a 24-year-old camper went missing.
He was swimming with a friend near the Mary River Wilderness Retreat when, in front of
horrified onlookers, the crocodile snatched him and pulled him underwater.
The young man had been on his way back to the bank when the crocodile lunged at him,
pulled him below the surface, and then swam away.
The man was celebrating a friend's birthday and had never counted on being eaten by a
crocodile.
According to the authorities, that's exactly what he should have counted on.
Everyone who visits the area is told repeatedly to not go swimming and to stay at least 15
feet (4.5m) away from the edge of any river.
Police say alcohol probably had some influence on the young man’s decision to swim.
And sadly, there was no sign of his body.
The crocodile took him and that was it.
2.
The Green Clawed Monster of Dogtown In the town of Evansville, in 1955, residents
were dealing with a streak of unrelenting heat and humidity.
People didn't have air conditioning back then, so everyone congregated down at the water
of the Ohio River.
Among those seeking relief from the heat were Naomi Johnson and her three children.
They went down to the Dogtown area of West Evansville and splashed about in the river.
It wasn't moving that fast, and it was only about 15 feet (4.6m) deep.
It was the perfect place for a sunny afternoon.
But then something happened.
As Naomi was out floating in the water,, something wrapped around her knee.
She would later describe the thing that grabbed her as a claw covered in hair.
Whatever this hairy claw belonged to, it pulled Naomi beneath the surface!
There was a huge struggle.
Naomi kicked and kicked, trying desperately to get out of the creature's grasp.
And when she finally got away from it, she swam as quickly as she could to the shore.
In the end, Naomi was safe.
Paramedics came and treated her lower leg for some bizarre cuts and scratches.
But the thing that bothered the paramedics was that something blueish-green had stained
her, and they couldn't get the stain off her leg.
It looked like a giant hand had been squeezing her ankle, and it had leaked greenish ink
into her skin.
Nobody knows what attacked Naomi Johnson that day.
It could have been a catfish, an overactive imagination, or a very real swamp monster
living in the Ohio River.
1.
Radiation Catfish There are giant catfish living in the rivers
and cooling ponds around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
You know, the one that exploded and leaked radiation into the atmosphere in 1986.
And while you may have heard reports that these giant catfish result from radiation
mutation, like the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, that's not actually the case.
These catfish are just naturally large.
And according to South Carolina radiation specialist Dr. Timothy Mousseau, radiation
would cause mutations of a much different sort.
Animals that become mutated are less likely to catch food.
They don't live very long, they're less effective in the world, and they just have a much harder
time.
He says very few mutations lead to gigantic growth.
It's something that happens in science fiction, but not in the real world.
When Jeremy Wade of River Monsters captured one of these catfish at Chernobyl and declared
it to be 16 times more radiated than a normal catfish, it was true.
It wasn't as alarming as people made it out to be.
The huge catfish that live in the rivers around Chornobyl are radiated, but not enough to
be turned into super mutants.
These are Wels catfish, a species known to reach ridiculously huge sizes.
Some of these fish can grow to be 800 pounds (363kg), although they’re typically closer
to around 350 pounds (159).
The Wels catfish are so big, one of them could eat a small child if it floated close enough
to its mouth!
What’s your favorite deadly river monster?
Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching today’s video!
For more outstanding stuff, be sure to subscribe and come back soon!
See you then, bye!