The Anthropophagous Catfish Of China

For a short time, an e-mail is circulating around which pretend to show pictures about a giant catfish, caught in the Chinese reservoir Huadu Furong.

Supposedly a few humans died every year in this reservoir under mysterious circumstances.

Recently again 2 persons are said to be drunken in Huadu Furong while they were swimming and attacked by a 3 metres catfish.

On search for the death, the animal on the pictures was caught, allegedly with a head of one of the victims in his stomach.

Actually the ,,giant catfish” is a young whale shark, the pictures probably were shot at an Asian

fish market.

Especially the first and second picture allows a good sight. The paint of the skin is characteristic for whale sharks and the bright points on the skin too.

Also the animal has no barbels, which is a very significant identifying feature of catfishes.

No matter from which perspective you take a look, you can not see any assured identifying feature.

Even if a whale shark would live in a Chinese reservoir, which is totally absurd because whale sharks only living in the warm oceans of the earth and are simply to big (to make no mention of the required food) to exist in a reservoir, the whale shark would not have eaten or attacked any person.

They are exclusively herbivores and they have not the teeth or other possibilities to attack other animals or humans.

Have a look at these whale shark, by http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Rhincodon_typus.jpg

Eingetragen am 15. Dezember 2007 um 15:27 Uhr in Fische, Internet-Hoax, See- und Meereswesen.

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