Fish don’t get fat in their natural habitat. For one thing, surviving involves a lot more cardio exercise, since their prey know to avoid them. And while chasing down dinner, lionfish also have to dodge their own natural predators, mainly groupers and moray eels (oh—and themselves; when food is scare they’ll eat their young).

But the Atlantic Ocean’s “market participants” have never before faced this disruptive new competitor. The lionfish’s new prey aren’t evolutionarily primed to flee from them, and no bigger predators have adapted a taste for them, says Carl Safina, founder of the Blue Ocean Institute.

This is why, in five weeks, a single lionfish can wipe out four-fifths of a reef’s small fish. Worse, they’re also prolific breeders; they hit sexual maturity within a year and start cranking out 40,000 eggs every few days after that.

FK – One wonders what the PETA freaks think of this… Oh yeah, it was wrong to imprison the fish in an aquarium in the first place. Can we train them to eat “Liberal”(commie) trash?