Amazon Sailfin Catfish

• It breathes air by swallowing it and absorbing it in the stomach, which has almost entirely lost its digestive function and works as a lung.
• It digs horizontal burrows more than a metre long in riverbanks to spawn, and in the rivers where it has been introduced those tunnels speed up bank erosion.
• It is invasive in Mexico, Florida, the Philippines and much of South-East Asia, following releases by aquarists.
• It is covered in bony plates instead of scales, hence the name of armoured catfish.
• Its mouth is a sucker with which it scrapes algae off the substrate while anchoring itself against the current.
• It breathes air using a modified, highly vascularised stomach, which lets it survive for hours out of the water and explains its success as an invader.
• It has established itself as an exotic species in rivers in Mexico, the United States, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India, almost always through aquarium releases. Its burrows erode riverbanks and displace native fauna.
• Its flesh is tough and yields little, so wherever it proliferates it competes with the fishery without replacing it.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (fish)

Habitat & environment

Rivers, channels and floodplains of the Amazon basin

Sources consulted: FishBase (Froese & Pauly, eds.); Lista Roja de la UICN; Nico y Schofield, USGS; Hoover et al.