Wels catfish
| 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 on annelid worms, gastropods, insects, crustaceans, and fish; the larger ones also eat frogs, mice, rats, aquatic birds such as ducks and are cannibalistic. Recently, 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.
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Wikipedia