Fish Elephant - Alternative View

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Fish Elephant - Alternative View
Fish Elephant - Alternative View

Video: Fish Elephant - Alternative View

Video: Fish Elephant - Alternative View
Video: Sardine Feeding Frenzy with Sharks, Penguins and More | The Hunt | BBC Earth 2024, March
Anonim

This is a long snout, or water elephant. Let's take a look and find out more about it …

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Have you seen such a miracle? And he was caught, and for a long time. It is also known among ornamental fish lovers. Well, the first who saw and caught them were residents of hot African countries. Koi belonged to the trunks of the sea kingdom with trepidation and excitement. Imagine you are an uneducated, ancient person, and this looks at you from the water. It is possible to believe in Gods and otherworldly forces.

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But let's get down to business, analyze who it is and what it is.

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Gnatonemus (Campylomormyrus numenius) or elephant fish from the Mormyridae family lives only in the large and deep rivers of Africa. The snout is strongly elongated and curved downward, like the trunk of an elephant, with a small mouth at the end of the trunk with a movable finger-like appendage on the lower lip.

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Mormir or elephant snouts, or elephant fish, or long snouts (lat. Mormyridae) are a family of freshwater ray-finned fishes from the order of aravana-like. Distributed in water bodies of tropical Africa and the Nile River.

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Usually reach sizes 9-50 cm, the largest species up to 1.5 m. The caudal stem is narrow, the caudal fin is deeply bifurcated. The tongue and parasphenoid have teeth. The rays of the branchial membrane are 6-8. There are 12-91 rays in the dorsal fin, 20-70 in the anal fin. The dorsal and anal fins are usually located opposite each other in the back of the body. Vertebrae 37-64. They have a large cerebellum. The shape of the snout is very variable, often it is elongated in the form of a trunk, it is used for drilling the muddy bottom of reservoirs in search of food.

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They feed on small invertebrates living in silt. For orientation in space, searching for food and detecting predators, they use their own electric field, which is generated by muscles. Able to make sounds.

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They are of commercial importance. Some species are kept and bred in aquariums.

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Gnatonem Peters, or the Nile elephant, or ubangi (lat. Gnathonemus petersii) is a species of freshwater fish from the family of mormidae. The specific name is given in honor of the German zoologist Wilhelm Peters (1815-1883).

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Gnathonem Peters is widespread in central and western Africa. Prefers areas of rivers covered with dense vegetation with a small current and turbid, dark water.

Habitat: was recorded in Mali, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Republic of Congo and Zambia - in the Chari, Ogun, Niger rivers. Prefers densely vegetated sections of rivers with a small current and turbid, dark water.

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The body is elongated, laterally compressed. It has no pelvic fins, the pectorals are raised high, the dorsal and anal fins are symmetrical and located almost at the base of the forked tail. The junction of the body with the caudal fin is very thin. A characteristic feature of the fish is the "mouth", or rather the lower lip in the form of a proboscis, which makes it look like an elephant.

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This organ is equipped with many nerve endings and can produce weak electrical impulses, allowing the fish to navigate in murky dark water, look for food, a partner and identify danger. The body color is dark brown, almost black. Under certain lighting conditions, it can sparkle with purple hues. The dorsal and anal fins on both sides are connected by two light, rounded arches.

Sexual dimorphism is weak. Females are larger, they have a more rounded abdomen. In nature, fish can reach a length of up to 25 cm, but in captivity, its size usually does not exceed 15 cm.

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Keeping in captivity.

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It is better to keep it in a flock of at least 3-4 individuals, but preferably 5-7. In a large flock of congeners, fish feel more comfortable and less likely to show aggression.

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A spacious aquarium is needed - from 200 liters with optimal dimensions (100 cm x 45 cm x 45 cm), the larger the group of fish, the correspondingly larger the capacity should be.

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Low or dim lighting is needed to make the fish feel safe.

Requires shelter, and their number must match or exceed the number of fish - smooth stones, driftwood and plants that can survive in low light conditions, such as anubias, ferns of the genus Microsorium, you can use Vallisneria.

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Sand or other soft soil is suitable as a substrate, otherwise the fish can damage the proboscis lower lip, making it difficult to feed. An aquarium is required with a lid, as fish can jump out of the water.

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Proboscis fish poorly perceive metal objects from which decorations can be made. Decorate the tank with wooden, stone, clay decorations pre-treated in boiling water. Elephant fish do not like polluted water, install a high-quality filter and compressor for aeration in the aquarium. Refresh 30% of the water weekly with fresh water, siphon the bottom regularly, after eating and as the soil becomes dirty.

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Water parameters

Temperature 23-28 ° C, dGH 5-15, pH 6.0-7.5. Need filtration with aeration, very sensitive to water quality, a third of which must be changed every week. Calm and peaceful view.

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Compatible with any non-aggressive tropical fish, with a lack of living space, intraspecific collisions are inevitable. Should not settle with very active or aggressive fish species as they cannot compete with them during feeding.

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Nutrition

In the conditions of the aquarium, the fish is quite unpretentious and takes frozen, live and other types of food. Prefers bloodworms, tubifex.

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Sometimes you can diversify the menu with small pieces of meat or lean fish. The feed collects at the bottom, first throws the food up and then sucks it in. The Nile elephant is quite slow and cannot compete with its more active neighbors in the struggle for food, so it is important to watch that they get enough food.

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In the freshwater bodies of Africa, where these fish come from, there are many worms, crustaceans for good nutrition. The first days after the purchase, feed the pet with fresh food, 2-4 weeks after development, you can give frozen food. As feed, you can give: daphnia, bloodworms, a well-washed tubifex, specialized feed in the form of granules. It is important not to overfeed the fish, and make sure that there is enough food for everyone. Elephant snouts can fight neighbors for food.

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The elephant fish is a relatively calm and friendly creature. It cannot be settled with large and predatory species that would not mind injuring its "proboscis". Elephants relate well to peaceful and calm species of fish, study them, even touch them, trying to get acquainted. The best neighbors for the elephant fish: African butterfly fish, cuckoo synodontis, veiled synodontis, congo fish, shape-shifter catfish. The elephant is not inclined to disturb small fish, it has weak electrogenicity, so it does not pose a threat to other inhabitants of the underwater fauna.

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Reproduction

They reach sexual maturity at the age of 2-3 years. Under natural conditions, the female can spawn up to 2000 eggs, from which fry hatch after 10-15 days.

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So far, there have been no successful cases of fish breeding in the aquarium.

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Provided that favorable conditions are created, the Nile elephant can live in captivity for up to 7-10 years.

But back to the inhabitants of the wild.

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These are nocturnal, bottom fish, keeping in thickets of papyrus, lotus and water lilies, digging in the silt and extracting worms and insect larvae from there, mainly chironomids. Reaches a length of over 60 cm and a weight of over 1 kg.

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The family Mormyridae, not in vain named elephant-fish, are quite interesting creatures, they can rightfully be called almost one of a kind!

And this is due not only to their appearance, but also to their incredible ability.

The fact is that these fish have electrical organs in their tail, which they use not only to detect prey, but also to navigate and communicate.

Also, these representatives of freshwater fish have a highly developed nervous system and an acute sense of hearing.

Along with a meter-long elephant fish, there are also aquarium representatives of this family, as well as true giants - long snouts.

Long-snout, or water elephant, lives in the murky waters of the Nile. It was named so for its long snout elongated in the form of a trunk. It is a large fish, reaching two meters in length.

The Arabs have long treated the longnose with superstitious fear, believing that it can see with its tail.

Only in 1953, at the East African Institute, it was found that a water elephant has a kind of "alternator" located near its tail. In the "batteries" of this "generator", the voltage is about six volts. When discharged, "batteries" create an electromagnetic field around the fish. If any object falls into this field, it is distorted, and a special receiver on the back of the fish registers the distortion.

"Electromagnetic ears" allow the long snout to detect a grain of sand falling behind the tail or a bait hanging from a hook. The radar is very sensitive, and it is no coincidence that a water elephant almost never gets caught in fishing nets.

This is a very rare and poorly studied fish. But, as it always happens, scientists and from this fish feature have gained a lot of benefit, namely they have developed the ENKI technology, based on the bioelectric features of the elephant fish and allowing to induce wave impulses of the human brain.

Searches for description and information about ENKI technology have led nowhere. Either only one resource has this information or it is very secret information.

Scientists believe that longsnout does not store electricity itself, but uses electrical signals from electric fish like eels.

Ultimately, scientists believe that this type of fish will throw more interesting ideas!

REFERENCE

Elephant fish belong to the family Mormyridae, numbering about 18 genera and more than 200 species. All of its representatives live in fresh water bodies of Africa, mainly in the equatorial zone, although some species are found in the lower course of the Nile and were known to the ancient Egyptians.

Beaked beaks have a very characteristic appearance: their body is usually compressed from the sides, the caudal peduncle is noticeably elongated and narrowed, the dorsal and anal fins are pushed back to the back of the body and are located opposite.

Only in dolphin fish of the genus Mormyrus, the dorsal fin is wider at the base and stretches along almost the entire back.

The color is usually brown-brown, olive or gray. The structure and shape of the mouth is extremely variable.

A number of species have an elongated, trunk-like snout with a mouth opening at the end (as, for example, in Campylomormyrus), occasionally only the lower jaw is lengthened (Gnathonemus), in some, the proboscis is short with a protruding lower jaw (Marcusenius), and many generally have a bluntly rounded snout (as in representatives of the genera Brienomyrus or Petrocephalus).

Such a question, will it go with beer?