Remember when it was all about the clever acronym? Most of us heard of MILFs (Moms I’d Like to [expletive deleted]) from the lips of John Cho (before he was Harold) as he gawked at a photo of Stifler’s mom in the teen sex romp (which let’s face it, twenties and thirties enjoyed as well) “American Pie.”

Then, with the inevitable aging of the acronym, if one came across a woman of a slightly more advanced age that placed her beyond the “mom” category, one might call her a GILF. (I just report the news, people.) Perhaps searching for a more delicate or exotic way to refer to this demographic, an animal emerged as the representative of this attractive, yet older, age group: cougar.

Now joining the dating menagerie is the golddigging sort that is being referred to as the piranha, “women who use the office party to snap up a high-flying colleague, whether he is married or not.” Coinage of the phrase is being credited in the Daily Mail to a divorce lawyer who herself is a divorcee.

We’ve all been told there are so many fish in the sea to choose from. But many complain that there’s no one out there. Maybe one too many piranha have been introduced into the ecosystem, causing other fauna to flee or become food. In this world of cougars and piranhas waiting out there, maybe men are afraid to leave the house. It’s a theory.

Via dating experts Em & Lo and their new blog, The Daily Bedpost.