June 25: National Catfish Day

Today is National Catfish Day, so here are ten things you might not know about catfish.

1. Catfish get their name from the barbels around their mouths which resemble a Cat’s whiskers. That said, there are some species of catfish which don’t have them.
2. The order they belong to, the Siluriformes, is one of the most diverse orders on the planet. It contains 36 families with over 3,000 different species. 1 out of every 20 vertebrate species is a catfish. Not only that, but scientists are continually discovering new ones. Between 2003 and 2005, over 100 species were named, including an entire new family.
3. As you might expect, then, catfish can be found virtually everywhere. They live inland and in coastal waters of every continent except Antarctica. They can live in temperatures from just above freezing to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. There is even a type of catfish which lives in swamps, ponds and slow moving or stagnant water which has a tendency to dry up. This fish is called the walking catfish (Clarias batrachus), because it has evolved the ability to “walk” (or more accurately, wiggle) so that if the pond it is living in dries up it can move to another.
5. They also vary considerably in size. The three largest species are the Mekong giant catfish, the Wels catfish and the Piraiba catfish. The largest catfish ever recorded was a giant Mekong catfish caught in Thailand in 2005 that weighed 293 kilograms (646 lb). At the other end of the scale are the Trichomycteridae are a family of catfishes commonly known as pencil catfishes or parasitic catfishes, which can measure just 1cm. This family includes the candiru fish (Vandellia cirrhosa), which is said to have a habit of swimming up the human urethra.
6. They don’t have scales. Instead they have smooth, mucus covered skin. Some species breathe through their skin; they all taste with their skin, having thousands of taste buds all over their bodies so they can detect chemicals in the Water around them.
7. Their diets also vary considerably. In general, they eat insects, Snails, other fish and fish eggs, but there are some types which eat wood and algae and others which are parasitic and live off the Blood of other animals. Some will eat waste and decaying material from the sea or river bottom. There are some which people keep as pets, as they help keep the tank clean, although their diet needs to be supplemented with ordinary fish food as well.
8. Catfish can communicate with one another. One characteristic of the species is an organ called the Weberian apparatus, which not only allows them to make a variety of sounds, but also improves their hearing and ability to discriminate between sounds. They also rub parts of their bodies together to make even more different sounds.
9. They have a number of nicknames, especially in the USA where they are known as mud cats, polliwogs, chuckleheads, big bullheads, shovelheads, scoopers and flatties, to name but a few regional nicknames.
10. They are mostly harmless but some have stings and need to be handled with care. Most of the stings aren’t venomous but stings from striped eel catfish have been known to be fatal in rare cases.

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