February 6,
2019, Field Museum
No one knows
just how many species live in the Amazon rainforest—scientists estimate that
it's home to one-third of the world's animal and plant species. There are still
thousands out there waiting to be discovered—like these six new catfish with
faces covered in tentacles.
"We
discovered six new species of
really cool catfish from the Amazon and Orinoco River basins. They have
tentacles on their snouts, they have spines that stick out from their heads,
almost like claws, to protect themselves and their nests, and their body is
covered with bony plates like armor," says Lesley de Souza, a conservation
scientist and ichthyologist at Chicago's Field Museum and lead author of a
paper in Zootaxa describing the new species.
"They're warriors, they're fish superheroes."
The new
catfish are all members of the genus Ancistrus, also known as bristlenose
catfish. If you've ever had an aquarium, you might know them as the
sucker-mouthed "algae-eaters" that help keep tanks clean. These
river-dwelling fish are between three and six inches long, and the males have
tentacles erupting from their snouts. They're there to persuade females that
their owners would make good dads. Ancistrus catfish fathers look
after their young, guarding nests of eggs and warding off predators. And the
tentacles make potential fish dads look like they know what they're doing.
"The idea is that when a female fish sees a male with these tentacles, to
her, they look like eggs. That signifies to her that he's a good father who's
able to produce offspring and protect them," says de Souza. It's an
evolutionary move that takes "catfishing" to a whole new, kind of
sweet level.
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