Scientists are alarmed: the inevitably changing ecological situation has led to the fact that the behavior of these giants becomes unpredictable. Of course, catfish are not sharks or crocodiles, but they are predators and therefore pose a certain danger.
Catfish live up to hundreds of years and are perfectly adapted to habitat conditions. However, being predominantly underwater orderlies, they often become killers.
These giants prefer quiet bodies of water, where they often become prey for fishermen. For example, in the Kapchagai reservoir (Kazakhstan) a few years ago a catfish was caught 2m 74cm long and weighing more than a centner. Our "domestic" specimens can weigh three hundred kilograms, reaching a length of four to five meters.
There are cases when fishermen saw much larger catfish. There is even a monument to one of these giants on Issyk-Kul Lake. This is the bone skeleton of the natural mouth of a huge catfish, which looks like an arch, under which any adult can freely pass.
Catfish always ambush
Terrible fish can be seen with your own eyes in the Kazakh river Ilek. That is why it is officially forbidden to swim there. The whole reality of the danger to life that these creatures carry is easy to imagine, recalling the tragic incident in the Voronezh reservoir (took place about fifteen years ago), when a gigantic catfish attacked a child and a girl. But in Khabarovsk, many still remember the case that occurred about half a century ago, when a giant catfish dragged a little boy under the water. Furious residents tried unsuccessfully to catch the monster, but only the military managed to track it down and shoot it with machine guns.
Catfish prefer to hunt, attacking from an ambush. They attack their prey from below and drag it to the depths. The Ukrainian media once told about the amazing story. At a depth of fifteen meters near the island of Khortitsa, divers found a sunken ship, in the hole of which a five-meter catfish was stuck. The remains of three passengers of the sunken ship - Polish citizens - were found in its insides. It is noteworthy that the local population did not find this fact surprising. According to local residents, toothy monsters often attack people and even fishing boats …
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Lipetsk monster
One of these monsters once appeared in the Matyr reservoir, also called the Lipetsk Sea. Many eyewitnesses said that this monster was simply incredible in size. It brazenly and with impunity ruled in the reservoir and devoured the game that was found there, as well as domestic animals, including dogs. One of the local fishermen - Semyon Lvov - in the morning, as usual, went fishing. Suddenly he saw the outline of something huge and dark sliding in the water. In the next moment, the body of the giant fish rose into the air, splashing water, and immediately dived back, disappeared into the depths. Having regained consciousness, the fisherman realized that he had seen an incredibly large catfish: it was about ten meters long.
Dangerous scavenger catfish
The rivers of Thailand are also famous for such unusual fish. So, in the Mekong, an almost three-meter catfish was caught, weighing almost three centners. Since this catch was officially recorded at the state level, the Thai catfish was recognized as the world's largest freshwater fish.
For Russian rivers, a hundred-kilogram mustachioed creatures are common. Buried in silt, catfish become almost invisible in the water. But already in the old days, the villagers knew well how dangerous these huge toothy creatures were. Before the women began to wash their linen in the river, their husbands carefully examined the reservoir to make sure there were no large catfish …
Usually these fish hunt early in the morning or in the evening, so at this time you should not swim in unfamiliar places. Although catfish are mostly scavengers and eat dead organisms, it is worth being careful. The geography of distribution of these fish is very wide: catfish live in almost any fresh water bodies of our planet. Therefore, deciding to swim in an unfamiliar place, be careful!