Salmon

• It can leap waterfalls up to 4.5 metres high on its migration upriver.
• A female can lay between 1,300 and 2,000 eggs per kilo of body weight.
• It migrates between fresh-water rivers, where it hatches and breeds, and the North Atlantic, where it feeds.
• comportamientoIt can return to spawn in the very river where it hatched, guided partly by a remembered smell of that water's particular chemistry.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat & environment

Cold fresh-water rivers of the north Atlantic to breed; migrates to the North Atlantic Ocean (feeding grounds off Greenland) as an adult

Birth weight

Newly hatched fry ~3/4 inch (~2 cm), feeding off the yolk sac

Size at birth

Eggs 5-7 mm across

Sexual maturity

Both sexes mature after 1-3 winters at sea (roughly 2-6 years old)

Gestation / incubation

No gestation; development from egg to fry takes several weeks in the gravel bed (the redd)

Litter / clutch size

700-800 eggs per pound of female body weight (roughly 1,300-2,000 eggs per kg)

Sources consulted: Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO); Animal Diversity Web; AnAge (genomics.senescence.info); U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Dimensions.com; Murray-Darling Basin Fish Fact Sheet