KELI PEMAKAN KAYU, aneh dan uniknya penemuan dunia. Sejenis ikan keli pemakan kayu di temui di Amazon.
SUMBER DIPETIK DARI BLOG DISCOVERY
http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/2010/09/a-catfish-that-eats-wood.html
A Catfish that eats WOOD?
Paulo Petry holds a new species of wood-eating armored catfish in Peru/
Copyright Paulo Petry
We all know that termites eat wood. But a catfish? That’s right. Scientists recently captured the first live specimens of a wood-eating armored catfish in Peru, a species only known previously from dried skins from fish that the indigenous people had shot and skinned. Having live specimens allows scientists to do genetic analyses and more fully study and document the species. And how - what a weird creature!
The Nature Conservancy biologist Paulo Petry participated in this year's scientific expeditions to the upper Purus river region of the Peruvian Amazon, part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) project led by Dr. James Albert that began in 2008 with a trip to the upper Yurua river, and ending next year with the last expedition to the upper Madre de Dios (on a side note, I visited the upper Madre de Dios in 2006 and you can see an article I wrote for Global Traveler magazine here and photos I shot at the former link - what an amazing place!).
Catching a fish that doesn’t eat so-called traditional fish food proved challenging. You can’t use hook and line, since they wouldn’t be attracted to a worm or spinner. “We use cast nest in areas with rapids with fast water where there are rocky outcrops and log jams,” explains Petry. “That seems to be the preferred habitat of the wood eating catfish. Gillnets are set along the river channels over night to capture any species that moves around.”
Turns out there are actually ten wood-eating catfish of the genus Panaque, which this new species is also a member of. All have spoon-shaped teeth that allow them to scrape wood off of rotting logs and wood in rivers and all live within the Amazon, though some are more widely distributed and others live only in extremely limited areas. The Amazon and its tributaries have an incredibly high biodiversity of freshwater fishes. Over 4,700 species are known in South America, and scientists discover an average of 100 new species per year. As quickly as they're discovered, many are disappearing - recall last October's post, "The untold loss of river mega-fish, an untold story"?
Have you been to the Amazon rainforest? What do you think of these mega-fish? Have any animals with weird feeding habits surprised you?
Source: http://blogs.discovery.com/animal_news/2010/09/a-catfish-that-eats-wood.html
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