Is it a snake ? Is it a fish ? No , it ’s a northern snakehead ! This bizarre creature – technically a fish , though someone should severalize its face – is aninvasive speciescapable of breathe air and slither like its reptilian doppelganger . Last month , one was caught in Missouri by an stunned monkfish .
Captured on May 25 , below Wappapello Lake Spillway in Wayne County , it marks the fourth time a northern snakehead has been recorded in the country , according to theMissouri Department of Conservation(MDC ) .
Thenorthern snakeheadfish ( Channa argus ) has a farsighted body and a snake - like head get over in python - pattern scale of measurement . They can grow up to 1 m ( 3 substructure ) long and are fearsome marauder , feasting largely on other fish , as well as crustaceans , frogs , little reptile , and sometimes unfortunate small birds and mammalian .
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Snakeheads can live for days on dry land.Image credit: matt_whitbeck viaiNaturalist(CC BY-NC 4.0)
Unlike most fish , which live a strictly aquatic life , the northerly snakehead can breathe air , which comes in handy in ill oxygenated water system . They can also go on dry land for several Clarence Shepard Day Jr. provided they ride out moist , and are even able to slide like a snake to devolve to water system .
The specie is not native to the US – it actually hail from Asia – and is a menace to native specie , which they prey upon and contend for resources against .
The most recent find is the fourth prison term the befuddled Pisces has been blemish in Missouri State Department – the first was find in a ditch in 2019 and two more were get last twelvemonth – and it came as quite a surprise to the fisher cat who set up it on the end of their line of products .
“ The anglerfish recognized they had something dissimilar and explore the fish ’s characteristic , and realized it was indeed a Chelone glabra , ” sound out MDC Fisheries Biologist Dave Knuth . “ The monkfish leave it on the paving for several hours thinking it would perish , and it never did . ”
The fish was then bag and transported to the local US Army Corps of Engineers office , where MDC agent Jacob Plunkett retrieved it after virtually four hr drop in a grip .
“ When I pick up the Pisces , it was still very much animated , ” Plunkett said .
If you too should regain yourself having catch a strange snakey specimen , the MDC stress that you should not give up it . Once you ’ve name it as a northerly turtlehead , they recommend killing it “ by severing the head , gutting it , or placing it in a sealed plastic base ” .
official trust the invasive Pisces may have first enter US rivers after an accident at a commercial fish farm in Arkansas in 2008 , and since then they ’ve swum ( and slithered ) their way north through the waters of the St. Francis River watershed .
