Ghost Catfish

• GeneralIts body is so transparent that its backbone and internal organs show through.
• Its transparency comes from muscle with very little reflective tissue and from the complete absence of pigment and scales, and it works as camouflage in open water where there is nowhere to hide.
• The iridescent sheen it gives off in certain light comes from diffraction in the banding of its muscle fibres.
• Unlike almost all catfish, it is active by day and lives in the water column rather than on the bottom.
• It is transparent because, like all catfish, it has no scales, and in addition its genus has no body pigment; the skin is made of collagen fibrils arranged like plywood, which lets light through.
• Until 2013 every glass catfish in the trade was wrongly identified as Kryptopterus bicirrhis; Ng and Kottelat then described this species after eighty years of confusion.
• Its transparency has made it a laboratory model for studying circulation, nerve regeneration and pigment movement in vivo.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

Slow-flowing tropical rivers and streams

Sources consulted: FishBase (Froese & Pauly, eds.) · Lista Roja de la UICN · Ng y Kottelat (2013), Zootaxa · Seriously Fish

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.