50 Fun Facts About Catfish

Giant catfish introduced to France's River Tarn have been filmed lunging onto the bank to snatch which birds?

Pigeons at the water's edge were caught in 28% of the lunges that researchers filmed. The beaching trick has never been reported from the rivers further east where the fish is native.

In Japanese mythology, the Namazu is a giant catfish living under the islands whose thrashing causes what?

Earthquakes strike when the god who pins the fish beneath a stone at Kashima lets his guard fall. Woodblock prints of the catfish sold in great numbers after a disaster hit Edo in 1855.

Catfish can find food in dark, muddy water thanks to what, spread across the skin of the entire body?

Taste buds cover the whole skin as well as the inside of the mouth cavity, which is why biologists call catfish 'swimming tongues'. They are especially sensitive to amino acids in the water.

Under Jewish dietary law, catfish are not kosher because they lack which feature that permitted fish must have?

Scales and fins are both required, and a catfish has only the fins. Its skin is either naked and coated in mucus or, in some families, armoured with bony plates.

What name is given in the American South to catching catfish with bare hands by reaching into their holes?

Noodling uses the angler's own hand as bait: the catfish swims forward and latches on, and is then hauled out of its hole. Safety worries have made the practice illegal in some states.

The 2010 documentary Catfish takes its title from a tale of catfish shipped in tanks to keep which fish lively?

Cod were said to turn pale and lethargic on the voyage unless a catfish shared the tank. A husband in the film tells the tale about his wife, and the word soon came to mean a fake online identity.

The walking catfish, an Asian species that wriggles across dry land, is established as an invader in which US state?

Florida imported the fish, reportedly from Thailand, in the early 1960s for fish farming. It props itself up on its front fins and snakes overland to reach new water.

Giant catfish live in the abandoned cooling ponds beside which decommissioned nuclear power plant?

Chernobyl's exclusion zone, emptied of people after the 1986 disaster, shelters a small population of the big fish in the ponds and waterways close to the plant.

Catfish and the Bottlemen took their name from a street busker who played beer bottles in which Australian city?

Sydney busker Catfish the Bottleman, nicknamed for his spiky beard, was frontman Van McCann's earliest musical memory. The two were reunited at a radio studio in the city in 2015.

Which US state, home to Belzoni's World Catfish Festival, is the country's largest producer of farmed catfish?

Mississippi took the lead after catfish farming moved into its Delta in the late 1960s, as profits from cotton, rice and soybeans sagged. One county alone has about 40,000 acres of ponds.

Which US president proclaimed a National Catfish Day to recognise the value of farm-raised catfish?

Ronald Reagan set the day for June 25, 1987, by which time farm-raised catfish had become a staple of the American diet.

In the United States, catfish is popularly crumbed with which ground grain before being fried?

Cornmeal is the classic American coating for fried catfish. In Europe the same kind of fish is more often cooked in the ways people cook carp.

Jim 'Catfish' Hunter became baseball's first big-money free agent by signing a five-year deal with which team?

The New York Yankees announced the deal on New Year's Eve 1974, two weeks after an arbitrator declared Hunter a free agent. It made him the highest-paid player in baseball, though other teams had offered more.

Which songwriter co-wrote 'Catfish', a tribute to pitcher Jim Hunter recorded for the 1976 album Desire?

Bob Dylan wrote the song with Jacques Levy and then left it off the album. It went unreleased until 1991, long after Joe Cocker had put out his own cover.

Which British angler investigated the Kali River goonch catfish attacks in the first season of River Monsters?

Jeremy Wade was told by villagers that a goonch had grown huge on half-burnt remains from riverside funeral pyres. He reckoned the culprit had to weigh at least 200 pounds.

Which early Egyptian king, shown on a famous ceremonial palette, has a name written with a catfish and a chisel?

Narmer's name is usually read as something like 'fierce catfish' or 'raging catfish'. He ruled around 3100 BC, and his name was often abbreviated to the catfish sign alone.

Catfish Row, a tenement on the Charleston waterfront, is the setting of which George Gershwin opera?

Porgy and Bess modelled its fictional Catfish Row on Cabbage Row, a real Charleston tenement. Gershwin later reworked the score into an orchestral suite that also goes by the name Catfish Row.

In Tim Burton's film Big Fish, Edward Bloom claims he caught an enormous catfish using what as bait?

His wedding ring is the bait in the tall tale Edward tells at his son's wedding party, set on the day the boy was born. The film is based on a 1998 novel by Daniel Wallace.

Which Notre Dame football star was publicly catfished in 2013, sending use of the term soaring?

Manti Te'o had told reporters that his girlfriend died of leukemia, but she had never existed. Notre Dame said he was the victim of a hoax by someone using a fictitious name.

Which giant catfish, named from a German word related to 'whale', is one of the largest freshwater fish in Europe?

Wels catfish are outgrown in Europe's fresh waters only by two sturgeons that migrate in from the sea. Native to the centre and east of the continent, they have been released further west as a prized sport fish.

The Mekong giant catfish, once named the world's largest freshwater fish, loses its teeth and eats mainly what?

Algae growing on submerged rocks feed a fish that weighed 293 kg in one catch from Thailand. Only the young have teeth and whiskers, and both fade away as they grow.

Thailand's see-through aquarium catfish, whose beating heart shows under a magnifier, is named after which material?

Glass catfish keep most of their organs packed close to the head, leaving the rest of the body see-through. The kind sold in pet shops was only recognised as its own species in 2013.

Synodontis nigriventris, a small catfish popular with aquarium keepers, is best known for swimming in which unusual way?

Upside down is the handiest position for grazing the undersides of sunken branches and logs, where the fish feeds in the wild. Another theory is that it makes breathing at the surface easier.

Lake Tanganyika's cuckoo catfish slips its eggs among those of which family of devoted fish parents?

Cichlids that carry their broods in their mouths scoop up the intruder's eggs along with their own. The young catfish hatch first and eat the host's fry inside its mouth.

Corydoras, the small armoured catfish kept in shoals in home aquariums, often dash to the surface for what?

A gulp of air helps Corydoras cope with the shallow, murky South American streams they come from, because they can breathe both water and air.

Panaque, large armoured suckermouth catfish of South America, are among the very few fish that feed extensively on what?

Wood is rasped away by Panaque with spoon-shaped teeth, a diet rare among vertebrates. Whether the fish truly digest it is disputed: some studies found they gain very little energy from it.

The Aspredinidae catfish of South America are named after which musical instrument, thanks to their body shape?

Banjo catfish have a wide, flattened head and a slender tail stalk that together suggest the instrument. A few of the smaller species are kept in home aquariums, where they burrow into sand by day.

Which tiny South American catfish, nicknamed the vampire fish, feeds on blood from the gills of larger fish?

Candiru are infamous for the claim that they swim into the human body, yet the first documented case dates only from 1997 and remains disputed. Their normal hosts are bigger fish.

What are the whisker-like feelers around a catfish's mouth, the feature that gave the fish its name, called?

Barbels come in as many as four pairs: one by the nostrils, one at the corners of the jaw and two on the chin. Not every species has prominent ones.

North America's most abundant catfish, the state fish of Kansas and Tennessee, is named after which river feature?

Channel catfish are also the official fish of Missouri and Nebraska, and no other catfish in the United States is fished for by more anglers.

In the 2010 documentary Catfish, on which social network does Nev Schulman's long-distance romance unfold?

Facebook is where Nev befriended a whole family after an eight-year-old girl sent him a painting of one of his photographs. His brother and a friend filmed what followed.

Which ancient Greek philosopher described, in his History of Animals, a catfish that carries his name?

Aristotle's catfish is found only in Greece, in lakes of the Acheloos River drainage. It grows to about 46 centimetres and is caught by local commercial fishermen.

As many as half of all catfish species can deliver a venomous sting using which part of the body?

Fin spines on the back and sides carry the venom, which is made by gland cells in the skin that covers them. A few species sting badly enough to put people in hospital.

The blue catfish, the largest catfish in North America, has become a problem invader in which bay?

Chesapeake Bay's blue catfish, released into Virginia waters in the 1970s, have multiplied fast. They cope with brackish water and eat large amounts of the bay's valuable blue crab.

After a US law stopped imports from Vietnam being labelled as catfish, exporters sold the fish under which name?

Basa became the label for the Vietnamese fish after American catfish farmers accused the country of dumping cheap imports on their market. The row was nicknamed the catfish war.

Muddy Waters reworked the old blues standard 'Catfish Blues' into which of his own 1950s records?

Rollin' Stone was his take on a blues sung in the American South since the 1920s. The Rolling Stones borrowed the title, and recorded the song themselves on their 2023 album Hackney Diamonds.

Guitarist Phelps 'Catfish' Collins and his brother Bootsy joined which soul singer's new band in 1970?

James Brown had lost the brothers by 1971, and Catfish went on to play with Parliament and Funkadelic. Bootsy gave him the nickname because he thought he looked like the fish.

Two eyeless catfish, the toothless blindcat and the widemouth blindcat, live in an aquifer beneath which Texas city?

San Antonio sits over the Edwards Aquifer, where both species are known only from a handful of artesian wells. Pumping out too much groundwater is the chief threat to them.

Which scientific order of fish contains every catfish, from armoured aquarium plecos to river giants?

Siluriformes holds more venomous species than any other order of vertebrates. Its members range from fish that mature at one centimetre long to giants weighing close to 300 kg.

Which Amazon giant, also called the goliath catfish or kumakuma, can reach 3.6 metres in length?

Piraíba is the name local people keep for the biggest fish, while smaller ones are called filhote. Most never come near the full 3.6 metres.

Catfish hear unusually well because a chain of small bones links the inner ear to which organ?

Swim bladder vibrations pass along the bones, known as the Weberian apparatus, which works as an amplifier for the ear. Carp, minnows and tetras have the same hearing aid.

The striped eel catfish, a venomous species whose young swarm in tight balls, lives mainly in which habitat?

Coral reefs make it an oddity in a group that mostly keeps to fresh water. The young gather in dense balls of about 100, while adults live alone or in groups of around 20.

Adult males of Ancistrus, the bushynose catfish sold for home aquariums, grow what on their heads?

Fleshy tentacles sprout across the head of adult males, while females have at most a few small ones along the edge of the snout. Pet shops usually sell the fish as bristlenose plecos.

Which Athletics owner is commonly credited with giving pitcher Jim Hunter his flashy nickname 'Catfish'?

Charlie Finley thought his teenage pitcher needed a flashy name. A story that the boy once went missing and came home with a string of catfish has no truth in it.

Which Pokémon is modelled on the giant catfish of Japanese legend?

Whiscash is called Namazun in Japan, a name taken straight from the mythical fish.

A popular 'iridescent' aquarium catfish from Southeast Asia is named after which sea creature, though it is no relation?

Shark catfish get the name from their body shape, and the young have a glowing sheen. The same species is farmed for the white fish sold cheaply as swai.

South America's thorny Doradidae can grind their fin bones to make noise, earning the name of which kind of catfish?

Talking catfish make their sounds in two ways: by moving a bone in the side fins or by drumming with special sonic muscles. Pet shops also sell them as raphael catfish.

Catfish: The TV Show, in which Nev Schulman helps people meet their online partners, was made for which network?

MTV launched the series in 2012 as a spin-off from the documentary. It is usually the catfish, not the person being deceived, who first contacts the show.

Which big North American catfish, also called the mudcat, yellow cat or shovelhead, strongly prefers to eat live prey?

Flathead catfish go for almost anything that moves and makes a vibration, smaller catfish included. The species has a string of other names, among them Opelousas and Johnnie cat.

Which family of armoured suckermouth fish, home to the aquarium plecos, is the largest of all the catfish families?

Loricariidae has more than 90 genera and close to 700 species, from fish barely two centimetres long to plecos of over a metre.