Tiny Subterranean Catfish Has Bulldog Snout and Four Rows of Teeth
Posted on May 13, 2014
Catfish experts have taken a closer look at an unusual subterranean catfish with a bulldog snout and four rows of sharp teeth. The catfish, Kryptoglanis shajii, sometimes rarely turns up in springs, wells and flooded rice paddies in the Western Ghats mountain region of Kerala, India.
John Lundberg, PhD, one of the world's leading authorities on catfishes and emeritus curator of Ichthyology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, examined the catfish along with his team. They examined the creature's bones using digital radiography and high-definition CAT scans. They published a research paper here in the journal, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Here is a close-up scanned image of the bony structures in the face of Kryptoglanis shajii. The scientists say it somewhat resembles the creature from Alien.
Lundberg says in a statement, "The more we looked at the skeleton, the stranger it got. The characteristics of this animal are just so different that we have a hard time fitting it into the family tree of catfishes."
Kryptoglanis has changes in the shapes of certain bones that are so strange that Lundberg describes them as "completely unique among catfishes and all fishes as far as I know." The catfish has a compressed front end with a jutting lower jaw, like a bulldog's snout. Unlike a bulldog, the catfish has four rows of conical, sharp-tipped teeth.
Lundberg says Kryptoglanis likely eats meat, such as small invertebrates and insect larvae. It is less than ten centimeters in length. Video footage has shown the fish can move swiftly in its environment.
Lundberg and his team examined three specimens of Kryptoglanis using digital radiography and one specimen using high-resolution X-ray computed tomography. A separate team led by Ralf Britz at the Natural History Museum of London independently examined the bone structure of the odd catfish using a technique of visualizing the skeleton called clearing and staining. Neither team could figure out which other catfishes Kryptoglanis is most closely related to.
Lundberg says, "It continues to be a puzzle." Here is a video visualization of the fish's internal bony structures: