It sounds like the plot for a movie on the SciFi Channel.

Oh, wait. It was the plot for a movie on the site where all such low-budget flicks eventually land or swim in this case. Matter of fact the devilish fish with a mouth filled with havoc-wreaking teeth known as a snakehead was the basis for two such movies.

However, the devastation these creatures can deal on an unsuspecting environment is very real. The toothy swimmer, which can grow up to nearly four feet long and weigh as much as 15 pounds, eats all varieties of fish and since it’s often the literal “big fish in a small pond,” just about every other fish is at risk of elimination.

The fish, native to southeast Asia, was caught by a surprised angler in Lincolnshire, England.

Once they’ve wiped out all their food sources in a pond or lake, they have another weird physical attribute that keeps them from starving in their now-empty pond. Like a hungry man headed to the fridge, the snakehead fish is capable of wriggling across land to another water source filled with unsuspecting swimming supper. Thanks to what is called a labyrinth organ, the fish can pull oxygen from the air for a short time in addition to the normal source of oxygen taken from the water through its gills.

Wildlife officials believe it may have been released into the water source by an aquarium owner tired of the fish or by an owner whose specimen out-grew its glass container.

The British snakehead isn’t the first one hauled from a water source outside of China. The nasty nibbler also caused habitat issues in the U.S. with specimens reeled in in Maryland in 2002 and 2004. As a result of the weird “catch of the day” ponds were drained by wildlife agents in an effort to eradicate the invader and take a bite out of the food chain topper.

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