Silurus glanis
| Wels catfish | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Siluriformes |
| Family: | Siluridae |
| Genus: | Silurus |
| Species: | S. glanis |
| Binomial name | |
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Silurus glanis Linnaeus, 1758 |
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| Range of the wels catfish. Red: native occurrence. Blue: occurrence in coastal waters. Orange: introduced | |
The wels catfish (/ˈwɛls/ or /ˈvɛls/; Silurus glanis), also called sheatfish, is a large species of catfish native to wide areas of central, southern, and eastern Europe, in the basins of the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas. It has been introduced to Western Europe as a sport fish and is now found from the United Kingdom all the way east to Kazakhstan and China and south to Greece and Turkey. It is a scaleless freshwater fish recognizable by its broad, flat head and wide mouth. Wels catfish can live for at least fifty years and have very good hearing to compensate for their poor sight.
The wels catfish lives in large, warm lakes and deep, slow-flowing rivers. It prefers to remain in sheltered locations such as holes in the riverbed, sunken trees, etc. It consumes its food in the open water or in the deep, where it can be recognized by its large mouth. Wels catfish are kept in fish ponds as food fish.
Like most freshwater bottom feeders, the wels catfish lives on annelid worms, gastropods, insects, crustaceans, and fish. Larger species have been observed to eat frogs, mice, rats, aquatic birds such as ducks and can also be cannibalistic. According to a study published by researchers at the University of Toulouse, France in 2012, individuals of this species in environments outside of their normal habitats have been observed lunging out of the water to feed on pigeons on land. Out of all beaching behaviors observed and filmed in this study, 28% of them were successful in bird capture. Stable isotope analyses of catfish stomach contents using carbon 13 and nitrogen 15 revealed a highly variable dietary composition of terrestrial birds. This is likely the result of adapting their behavior to forage on novel prey in response to new environments upon its introduction to the Tarn River in 1983 since this type of behavior has not been reported before within the native range of this species.
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Wikipedia