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I realized that it has been a while since Ferrebeekeeper featured a catfish post so I fired up Firefox and set out to remedy the omission, and, in my search for thrilling catfish themed material to share with you, I accidentally stumbled onto these amazing Russian flags. Now, it is worth mentioning, that some of the most negative feedback Ferrebeekeeper has received over the years has involved flags (the commenter thought that the symbolism and history of national flags was tedious and repetitive). Additionally, due to current events, Russia is not exactly experiencing a worldwide rash of goodwill. Nonetheless, I think you will agree that both of these flags are marvels of the vexillographist’s art! I have placed the catfish flag at the top so you understand how I got here, however the flag below is my favorite. Does that woolly mammoth have a gold tusk? Also look at how tough both of these creatures look. This inspires me to write future posts about both the wels catfish (top flag) and the woolly mammoth (bottom flag). Keep your eyes peeled for those. Where this post falters somewhat is in explaining what these flags symbolize (and describing the places they are from). An honest answer is: I don’t know and it is too hard to find out at 11 PM on Thursday night. But be honest: if I told you a bunch of numbers about Ust-Yansky, which is about three times the size of Pennsylvania, but with a total population that could fit on a single Staten Island Ferry, would you be fascinated or would your eyes glaze over? Be honest. This gold-toothed Russian mammoth is watching you very closely.
As we get closer to Halloween, you are probably asking yourself “are there any black and orange catfish?” It is a great question, and there are indeed lots of black and orange catfish species (depending somewhat on how you define black or orange and on the color/pattern/age/health of the individual catfish in question).
One definitive answer however can be found in the friendliest and most adorable genus of catfish the adorable Corydoruses (which are the subject of some of Ferrebeekeeper’s fondest and saddest aquarium memories). Anyway, Corydoras catfish are noteworthy for their tiny size, sociability, schooling instinct, and endearing features. Perhaps the most popular species of Corydoras catfish is Corydoras aeneus, “the bronze corydoras” a dish which reproduces easily in aquariums and is thus sold in vast quantities for the pet trade. A mild mannered generalist of robust health and easy-going nature, Corydoras aeneus has everything that a hobbyist could want…except for bright colors. In the wild the fish is a sort of demure brownish green with translucent gray edges.
Since Corydoras aeneus reproduces so readily in captivity, however, catfish fanciers have started to select for brighter colors, and thus we have Corydoras aeneus “Venezuela” a domesticated breed of tiny tropical catfish which is black and orange so as to make it more appealing as an ornamental fish. If the fact that there are people who spend their lives working on selectively breeding fish to be flashy shade of orange and black is shocking to you, I will have to introduce you to goldfish!
Africa’s Congo River is the 10th longest river on Earth, but it is the world’s second greatest river by volume of water discharged. In the final 300 kilometer (200 mile) span before the river empties into the Atlantic Ocean, the Congo is a deeply weird river…in that it is weirdly deep. Portions of the Lower Congo have a depth of 220 meters (720 feet) which makes the Congo the world’s deepest river (chasmic freshwater locations are evidently a fascination here at Ferrebeekeeper). The bottom of the Lower Congo is not a serene place either, but is a dark world of treacherous currents, strange eddies, underwater waterfalls, and whirlpools.
Although these depths do not sound like the ideal place for, say, opening a sandwich shop, they are ideal for expediting the speciation of fish. The Lower Congo has over 300 species of fish (and the number is growing as adventuresome ichthyologists study the native fish more closely…and as the river creates new varieties of fish). The fast currents act like mountain ranges do on land, separating genetic pools of certain species so that they evolve in different directions. This had led to some truly strange species such as the Gymnallabes nops (an air breathing catfish which is giving up on the scary river and crawling off into the moist leaves of the jungle), all sorts of exquisite elephant fish (Mormyridae) electrical fish which read the substrate with sensitive trunk like “noses”, upside-down polka-dotted squeaking catfish (which sounds like a rockabilly lyric), and, maybe best of all, Lamprologus lethops, a blind white cichlid of the chaotic depths which dies of decompression sickness when jerked up to the river’s surface. When seen by Congolese fishermen, this cichlid is a bony blob of quivering pale agony gasping from a bony mouth. This has led to the local folk calling it “Mondeli bureau” which means “white guy in an office” (an allusion to how they (correctly) imagine westerners look and feel in our miserable & pointless dayjobs).
This is exactly how I feel! Thanks for noticing, perceptive Congolese fisherfolk!
I wish I could tell you more about the wonders of the lower Congo, but research into this unique ecosystem has been surprisingly scant. I will keep my eyes open though. I want to know more about those upside-down, polka-dotted, screaming catfish! I also want to write more about catfish of the Gymnallabes family. Finally, I have a feeling there are even weirder fish at the very bottom of the river, we just don’t know about them yet. We will keep our eyes on the Congo. For the world’s second greatest river, we know a lot less than we should.
Paraloricaria (image from Paul Louis Oudart – Voyage dans l’Amérique méridionale)
Do you remember all of the catfish which used to be on Ferrebeekeeper? There were underground catfish, coral reef catfish, and giant catfish. We even featured Ancient Egyptian catfish and nightmare vampire catfish that crawl inside people! Sigh…happy times. That obsession with catfish was one of the factors which launched this blog. It is extraordinary how many different species of catfish there are and how wildly diverse this one order of lifeforms is. Catfish have extraordinary senses which humans lack entirely. They can be tender and solicitous parents and they are capable of building structures. Ranging in size from nearly microscopic to enormous, the siluriformes are everywhere except for the deep ocean and Antarctica (and, uh, the sky). Yet, due to human myopia, the first thing I get about catfish on Google is some weird internet mumbo-jumbo about pretending to be somebody else online? What???
Anyway, I am trying to freshen up Ferrebeekeeper, and I am going to fold the “catfish” category into a larger “fish” category (if catfish are so inexhaustibly diverse, just imagine how diverse the larger category of fish is!).
For old times sake, though, we are going to feature a few more posts celebrating the diversity of this enormous vertebrate order (1 out of every twenty species of vertebrates is a catfish!). Today we feature a little gallery of the whip slender armored catfish of the Loricariinae subfamily (aka the “whip catfish”). These small armored catfish live throughout Central America and South America East of the Andes and feed on small invertebrates of the substrate.
Rineloricaria sp. (from bluegrassaquatics.com)
Loricaria cataphracta (Compte rendu de l’expédition de Francis de Castelnau en Amérique du sud)
Apistoloricaria condei (by Hippocampus-Bildarchiv)
Aposturisoma myriodon (Image from PlanetCatfish)
Just look at all of these beauties! It is like wandering through an art show and being continuously surprised at how many stunning variations there are on a single theme.
Here is one of the world’s rarest and strangest fish, the golden cave catfish (Clarias cavernicola) which can be found only one place on Earth, the Algamas/Dragonsbreath cave in the Namib Desert. This incredible cavern is 100 meters (300 feet) beneath the desert and it holds the world’s largest known underground lake (discounting all subglacial lakes—which can be huge). Above ground is an arid desert wasteland, but in cave is a huge lake where unfathomed waters may descend another 100 meters into the Earth. Since only a narrow chasm opens to the sky, the lake has a very limited ecosystem built around whatever falls into this chasm (which was only discovered by science in 1986). These blind ascetic catfish dwell on such scraps and on the white shrimp and strange aquatic worms which live in the water beneath the desert. Though they have lost their eyes, their other senses have become extremely acute in order to find every bug or speck of nutrient which falls into the hidden lake. Additionally, these small (16 cm/6 inch) fish have a limited ability to sip air–so that they can better survive the still and anaerobic depths of their hidden lake. The entire species may only consist of a few hundred (or thousand) individuals.
Well, the 2016 election is finally over. And I sort of got my wish–all three branches of government are fully united and deadlock is over. Plus we have our own Kim Jong-un now, a glorious orange child-monarch of absolute privilege who is beholden to no one and obeys no rules. Perhaps we can use this loose cannon to deal with North Korea once and for all, before they get long-range nuclear missiles or trade warfare leaves China with nothing to lose. Oh! and maybe Newt Gingrich will finally get his moon base. Anyway, we can talk about affairs of the world again in 2020 (if any of us are alive)…or maybe in 2018 if demographics moves faster than the statisticians say.
But the end of the never-ending election brings up one big problem: what is anyone going to write about now?
Fortunately Ferrebeekeeper has the answer the nation craves: Ancistrus–the endearing bushynose catfish! These armored catfish from South America (and Panama) have faces so ridiculous and ugly that they are actually adorable. Ancistrus catfish are part of the Loricariidae: armored suckermouth catfish which live on plant material. Many of the 70 species of Ancistrus catfish live in the Amazon Basin, but some live in other South America river systems–or up in Panama. Females have a few short bristles poking out from around their mouths, but males have a magnificent beard of tendrils running from their midface.
Male Ancistrus catfish are dutiful parents. They hide in underwater dens and guard clutches of eggs which the females lay upside down sticking to the roof. When the fry hatch, the father guards them when they are little and vulnerable. Female catfish like dutiful fathers, and they are amorously receptive to males who have clutches of young (since successful males tend to have multiple batches of eggs). It has been speculated that the tendrils actually evolved to help males look like they have young in low-light dating situations. Undoubtedly these tendrils also help the catfish feel and taste their way around in low light situations (although the fish, like all catfish, are blessed with an astonishing array of senses).
Three species of Ancistrus are, in fact, true troglobites: they dwell in underwater caves and have lost most of their pigmentation (and their eyes are becoming less acute and withering away). The other species of Ancistrus are pretty stylishly colored too: they tend to be covered with yellow or white spots. I think we can finally agree that this is a face we can all get behind!
The Amazon is the planet’s largest river. The great waterway is very much in the news this week as the world turns its eyes to Brazil to watch the Olympics. My whole life I have wanted to visit the upstream backwaters of the Amazon and view its ecological treasures before it is all converted into strip malls and low-cost parking. Unfortunately, the developers are doing a lot better in this life than I, so I am not sure that will ever happen. Thus, instead of going to Brazil in the real world, we will go there via blog! No need for visas (I hear that Brazil doesn’t really want American visitors anyway). We can check out the amazing fish, snakes, mammals, and, um, emperors of Brazil without ever leaving the internet.
No!
Speaking of fish, the Amazon is the home of the fearsome pirarara! No freshwater fish is more storied or more…wait “pirarara”? What the heck is that?\
The Pirarara is actually a giant extremely colorful catfish which grows to immense size (You knew I couldn’t get through these Olympics without writing about some of the magnificent siluriformes from the place with the greatest diversity of catfish….a place where catfish are actually found beneath the water table).
The pirarara (Phractocephalus hemioliopterus) aka “the redtail catfish” is the only living representative of the genus Phractocephalus. These catfish are omnivores which grow to 1.8 meters (six feet) in length and weigh up to 80 kg (180 lb). I wonder if they wear the same sized suits as me? I am being silly, of course: these catfish do not wear suits since nobody has found a pattern which does not clash with their brown backs, mustard yellow sides, and white stomach….and their bright ketchup-red tails. The pirarara should really be called the condiment catfish. The fish are popular in large aquariums, although they are so voracious that they can injure themselves by swallowing aquarium furniture and vomiting it back up.
Redtail catfish may be the last living members of the Phractocephalus genus, but there were once many species…some of which date back to the upper Miocene (13.5 million years ago). They lived throughout what is now Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, and Ecuador, in the great series of lakes and wetlands which made up the long-vanished Pebas mega-wetland. The pirarara has a certain prehistoric look to it. Can you imagine the crazy color combinations which its vanished realtives must have had as they sw3am among the super crocodiles and crazy alligators of the Pebas?
Here is a stamp which combines two of my fascinations—catfish and Namibia. Of course Namibia is a vast and profoundly arid desert—literally a sea of sand—so perhaps you are wondering how a catfish made it onto their postage. Well the African sharptooth catfish (Clarias gariepinus) has a habit of getting everywhere. It lives throughout most of Africa and the Middle East and (though ill-conceived aquaculture) has established colonies in Vietnam, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. The catfish is an air breather. It can sip pure air without the use of its gills, so it can survive in puddles, mud wallows, and even in filthy anaerobic water. Some of them have moved into the sewers of big cities. Speaking of big it is arguably Africa’s largest catfish with an average adult length of 1–1.5 m (3 ft 3 inches –4 ft 11 inches). Even in a dry land like Namibia this tough persistent catfish manages to find watercourses of one sort or another. Like its close cousin, the walking catfish of Asia, the African sharptooth catfish is a remarkable creature.
African sharptooth catfish (C. gariepinus)
The Amazon River is renowned for having the greatest diversity of catfish of any river—oh, and it is also the largest river in the world too, I guess. The river drains half of South America and its branches flows through many many different sorts of regions. Near Tena in Ecuador, the river’s tributaries flow through a karst landscape of sunken limestone caves, streams and springs. There, deep beneath the rainforest, scientists have discovered a catfish with a remarkable ability to climb walls—or perhaps I should say they have rediscovered a previously known fish and found out it has unexpected talents.
The cave-climbing catfish (photograph by Geoff Hoese)
A team of naturalists led by Geoff Hoese found the catfish in a subterranean waterway jauntily climbing up a sheer 3 meter (10 foot) stone wall with a thin rivulet running down it. Here is a link to a National Geographic article about the catfish—you can go there and watch a video of the catfish shimmying up and down water-slicked rocks. The scientists believe the fish is Chaetostoma microps, a member of the suckermouth armored catfish family (Loricariidae), a group of animals which Ferrebeekeeper has enthused about in past posts (although the fish’s identity remains unclear—since the team had no permit for taking specimens and left the creature unmolested still climbing its underground walls).
An illustration of Chaetostoma microps
Chaetostoma microps is not notably specialized for cave life—it still has pigment and eyes, and lacks the marked asceticism of other true underdwellers like the pink catfish Phreatobius cisternarum (which lives beneath the water table!) Chaetostoma microps feeds on algae—which is notably lacking from underground caves. So what exactly is the fish doing down there? And how/why did it evolve its remarkable ability to climb rocks without much water? The answers are unclear, but it seems reasonable to assume that a fish from the vertiginous yet cave-studded foothills of the Andes would need the ability to climb in order to maximize its habitat (and to prevent being sucked into an inescapable underground grotto). Maybe Chaetostoma microps is really a mountaineer catfish. Instead of leaping like salmon, it deals with its rocky treacherous home by suction, barbels, and indomitable spirit!
I had lots of favorite toys as a child—the toy I loved most changed as I changed ages (a truth which continues to be valid). However, like most boys of my demographic, one of my all-time favorite toy properties was the Star Wars action figure line by Kenner. This was a line of licensed toys based on the blockbuster space opera films. The Kenner action figures changed all the parameters of toy manufacturing & sales and made a bajillion dollars…but I don’t have to tell you about Star Wars action figures; unless you are some bizarre eremite or a post-human reading this in the distant future, you already know all about them. Anyway I uncritically loved all the figures I had–except for three problem figures: R2D2 had a white marble stuck up inside of him which made it impossible to deploy his third leg (I had the droid shop—and the third leg! but to no avail). Han Solo’s head broke off and was lost: he was in the Hoth Anorak, so afterwards he just looked like a mountaineer who had slipped, but I still knew it was Han, so it was pretty devastating. And, perhaps worst of all, somebody chewed up Greedo’s head.
The internet, however, has no lack of unblemished Greedos.
Now R2D2 was not a problem—you could still play with him. Han Solo’s terminal accident came as I was outgrowing the figures. But, throughout my childhood, Greedo’s disfigurement always bothered me. Plus who chewed up his head? Was it the dog? Was it my little sister? Was it me? He had come into my hands when I was at such a tender age, that the secret of his scars was lost. I could make it work—Greedo’s fate in the movies was pretty inglorious. When you were playing, it was easy to make believe he had been savaged by some horrible space monster. Yet he was one of the most alien of the alien characters and that was diminished. Plus his big soulful empty eyes—his best feature!–were ruined.
Peckoltia greedoi (Armbruster/Auburn University)
That is a pretty long introduction to today’s post which–as you no doubt anticipated—is about catfish! Johnathan Armbruster is an ichthyologist who curates the fish collection for Auburn University Museum of Natural History. Recently, as he was going through old specimens, he found an unknown catfish collected from the Amazon in 1998. Using his special ichthyology powers, Armbruster determined this was an entirely new species of armored suckermouth catfish. Destiny was in his hands. He had to name the new catfish. I should mention that the defining features of this new armored catfish were its big soulful empty eyes (as well as some head appendages and a ribbed body).
Greedo really was named first
Armbruster reached back to his own childhood memories and named the fish Peckoltia greedoi, in honor of the incompetent Rodian bounty hunter (well also in honor of Gustavo Peckolt, a member of the Natural History Commission—but Armbruster didn’t get to choose the genus name). Looking at the fish, the movie character, and the action figure, I become ever more convinced the little catfish is actually named after the toy. I wonder if Armbruster’s Greedo action figure was chewed up too.
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