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Monsters arrive in the Lakes! PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 25 June 2009

Wels catfishTwo ‘monsters’ of the freshwater deep are now on show at the Lakes Aquarium, in Cumbria.

The two Wels Catfish called Hannibal and Orson have been moved from their previous home at Brighton Sea Life centre where they had outgrown their tank.

The huge creatures have a broad, flat head, wide mouth, a long eel-like body, sharp pectoral fins and hundreds of rows of tiny teeth.

Hannibal weighs around 150 pounds and is about six feet long whilst Orson is around 100 pounds in weight and measures approximately five feet in length.

After the seven hour journey by road from Brighton the two catfish were carefully re-housed in new tanks in the Lakes Aquarium, which is on the shores of Windermere.

That's Hanniball pictured below inspecting his nerw tank.

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 on the bottom, where it can be recognized by its large mouth.

Wels catfish are kept in fish ponds as food fish and they are also kept as pets. They are found in wide areas of central, southern, and eastern Europe, and near the Baltic and Caspian

The female produces up to 30,000 eggs per kilogram of body weight. The male guards the nest until the brood hatches, which, depending on water temperature, can take from three to ten days.wells_catfish_09

If the water level decreases too much or too fast the male has been observed to splash the eggs with the muscular tail in order to keep them wet.

The wels catfish lives on annelid worms, gastropods, insects, crustaceans, and fish; the larger ones also eat frogs, mice, rats and aquatic birds such as ducks.

Exceptionally large specimens are rumored to attack humans in rare instances, a claim investigated by extreme angler Jeremy Wade in an episode of the Animal Planet television series River Monsters.




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