When an 18-month-old girl was found crying with her fingertip appearing bitten off, her parents immediately suspected the family dog.
But upon closer inspection, police revealed, it may have been a smaller and far quieter pet: Their piranhas.
Swimming in a fish tank near where the girl was playing, police in Maine Township, Illinois, eyed the sharp-toothed fish when doctors determined a dog's bite wasn't behind the curious wound.
'We talked to the mom and asked what else could it be?' said Frank Bilecki, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff's Office to the Daily Herald.
'She quickly said two piranhas were right in the vicinity of where she was playing ... We know piranhas can bite,' he said.
Notifying the girl's father who was home at the time, he promptly made his way to the fish tank, darting his own bare hand into the tank to snatch one of the fish from the water.
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TXT 24
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