Armored Catfish That Eats Wood Discovered In Amazon

Cool Green Science:

An armored, Amazonian catfish. That eats wood from fallen logs -- and, when desperate, the feces of its fellow catfish. With teeth shaped like spoons to make the eating easier. And oh, it's a new species.

Read the whole story: Cool Green Science

Comments

[vinny]

04:47 AM on 08/31/2010

wood and sh/t diet, each his own

[TheSpiderMind]

11:40 PM on 08/30/2010

It's evolving. And we should be afraid... very afraid.

If the catfish can evolve armor and an appetite for trees, it might also evolve to want to eat us and/or control our minds.

[BannedNBoston]

11:17 PM on 08/30/2010

Thats one rugged looking catfish.

[BannedNBoston]

11:14 PM on 08/30/2010

Put them in the Mississippi they might survive corexit or die and eat other as die swimming upstream!! COREXIT CANNIBAL CATFISH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhW6GKWuAMM

[Tiggy]

11:04 PM on 08/30/2010

I wonder if it is infact a new fish species or just newly discovered but very old.

[deweydecimal]

08:04 PM on 08/31/2010

It's new to human science although the researcher does point out that it belongs in a family of catfish with over 800 species identified so far.

[Tiggy]

11:03 PM on 08/30/2010

Yet another reason not to swim in water one can't see the bottom.

[Tommygun264]

01:15 AM on 08/31/2010

If you've got a wooden leg.

[Tiggy]

07:52 AM on 08/31/2010

It's not so much the teeth that I fear as the Armour plating...those fins look like needles.!

[StraferX]

09:55 PM on 08/30/2010

Good read. Always amazing the things that get discovered and identified every day. Makes one wonder with how we treat the earth how many species have gone extinct that we never new about and what lies ahead in the vast areas that have yet to be explored like the ocean depths.

[Vickster]

09:31 PM on 08/30/2010

Go to any pet store with a freshwater fish department. Chances are you'll find a few armored catfish (common plecostomus, bristle-nosed plecostomus, clown plecostomus, royal plecostomus, etc.) that require require a certain amount of wood in their diet.

[Tommygun264]

01:22 AM on 08/31/2010

I was going to say it looked like a big plecostomus. They get that big here in Hawaii in our freshwater streams that flow down from the mountains. They come from people dumping out their aquarium fish into streams and Hawaii, being a relatively young group of islands, hasn't developed many freshwater fish, so they have few natural predators. Every few years the wildlife service will go through the streams using electric wands to root out and round up the largest ones, which are given to pet stores & schools or disposed of.

[SiberianRat]

07:53 PM on 08/30/2010

Don't click any links on that site! My AVG malware detector picked up malicious links.

[wordsfromawoman]

06:08 PM on 08/30/2010

A new species discovered? Hurry! Hurry! Let's quickly fish it to extinction! Planet earth is small and just doesn't offer habitat for species other than homo sapiens.
www.wordsfromawoman.wordpress.com

[mixpiklix]

04:52 PM on 08/30/2010

when you cook it does it smoke itself?

[humaneisfact]

04:13 PM on 08/30/2010

there were already armored wood eating cat fish discovered..this one is just an undiscovered one.The differences are probably minor.I wonder about these "different" species found in families...are they really different species..that can be verified with dna?People of different ethnicities are not seperate species just because of minor differences in eyes,skin color or hair type...

[anitaj]

03:11 PM on 08/30/2010

Very cool!

Although, I don't know that "discovered" is the right word as the fish is already known to local people. Perhaps "identified" would work better.

[Crushedknee]

02:26 PM on 08/30/2010

Cellulose digestion?...That fish may have some very valuable Bacteria residing in its gut..

[getsit]

02:43 PM on 08/30/2010

Read the whole thing. It's a protozoa that enables it to digest the cellulose. Without it they starve.

[VapeGirl]

02:09 PM on 08/30/2010

Beware the link to the stories website - it contains maleware.

[anitaj]

03:11 PM on 08/30/2010

Uh oh. Can you be more specific about the malware?

[born 2b different]

09:39 AM on 08/31/2010

Click on the links and find out for yourself.