Catfish
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50 free Catfish trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Catfish are one of the great success stories of the fish world. There are thousands of species, from thumb-sized aquarium pets to river monsters heavier than a grown man, and between them they have picked up some of the strangest habits in nature. Some hunt on land, some stun their prey, some trick other fish into raising their young, and a few have made a home in places no fish has any business being. This quiz covers the whole story. Expect questions on the biggest and oddest species, on how a catfish finds its dinner in muddy water, on the farms and kitchens of the American South, and on the myths the fish has inspired around the world. The name has also wandered a long way from the river, so there are questions on the ballplayer, the bands, the opera, the documentary and the online slang that all borrowed it. It is written for anglers, fishkeepers, nature lovers and quiz hosts looking for a fresh round. The opening questions are the friendliest, the later ones will stretch people who really know their fish, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Giant catfish introduced to France's River Tarn have been filmed lunging onto the bank to snatch which birds?
Pigeons
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.
Q 02In Japanese mythology, the Namazu is a giant catfish living under the islands whose thrashing causes what?
Earthquakes
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.
Q 03Catfish can find food in dark, muddy water thanks to what, spread across the skin of the entire body?
Taste buds
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.
Q 04Under Jewish dietary law, catfish are not kosher because they lack which feature that permitted fish must have?
Scales
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.
Q 05What name is given in the American South to catching catfish with bare hands by reaching into their holes?
Noodling
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.
Q 06The 2010 documentary Catfish takes its title from a tale of catfish shipped in tanks to keep which fish lively?
Cod
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.
Q 07The walking catfish, an Asian species that wriggles across dry land, is established as an invader in which US state?
Florida
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.
Q 08Giant catfish live in the abandoned cooling ponds beside which decommissioned nuclear power plant?
Chernobyl
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.
Q 09Catfish and the Bottlemen took their name from a street busker who played beer bottles in which Australian city?
Sydney
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.
Q 10Which US state, home to Belzoni's World Catfish Festival, is the country's largest producer of farmed catfish?
Mississippi
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.
Q 11Which US president proclaimed a National Catfish Day to recognise the value of farm-raised catfish?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan set the day for June 25, 1987, by which time farm-raised catfish had become a staple of the American diet.
Q 12In the United States, catfish is popularly crumbed with which ground grain before being fried?
Cornmeal
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.
Q 13Jim 'Catfish' Hunter became baseball's first big-money free agent by signing a five-year deal with which team?
New York Yankees
Q 21The Mekong giant catfish, once named the world's largest freshwater fish, loses its teeth and eats mainly what?
Algae
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.
Q 22Thailand's see-through aquarium catfish, whose beating heart shows under a magnifier, is named after which material?
Glass
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.
Q 23Synodontis nigriventris, a small catfish popular with aquarium keepers, is best known for swimming in which unusual way?
Upside down
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.
Q 14Which songwriter co-wrote 'Catfish', a tribute to pitcher Jim Hunter recorded for the 1976 album Desire?
Bob Dylan
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.
Q 15Which British angler investigated the Kali River goonch catfish attacks in the first season of River Monsters?
Jeremy Wade
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.
Q 16Which early Egyptian king, shown on a famous ceremonial palette, has a name written with a catfish and a chisel?
Narmer
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.
Q 17Catfish Row, a tenement on the Charleston waterfront, is the setting of which George Gershwin opera?
Porgy and Bess
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.
Q 18In Tim Burton's film Big Fish, Edward Bloom claims he caught an enormous catfish using what as bait?
His wedding ring
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.
Q 19Which Notre Dame football star was publicly catfished in 2013, sending use of the term soaring?
Manti Te'o
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.
Q 20Which giant catfish, named from a German word related to 'whale', is one of the largest freshwater fish in Europe?
Wels
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.
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.
Q 24Lake Tanganyika's cuckoo catfish slips its eggs among those of which family of devoted fish parents?
Cichlids
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.
Q 25Corydoras, the small armoured catfish kept in shoals in home aquariums, often dash to the surface for what?
A gulp of air
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.
Q 26Panaque, large armoured suckermouth catfish of South America, are among the very few fish that feed extensively on what?
Wood
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.
Q 27The Aspredinidae catfish of South America are named after which musical instrument, thanks to their body shape?
Banjo
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.
Q 28Which tiny South American catfish, nicknamed the vampire fish, feeds on blood from the gills of larger fish?
Candiru
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.
Q 29What are the whisker-like feelers around a catfish's mouth, the feature that gave the fish its name, called?
Barbels
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.
Q 30North America's most abundant catfish, the state fish of Kansas and Tennessee, is named after which river feature?
Channel
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.