man eating wallago attu??

[snookman]

anyone know of any validity to this????

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/piranha038/wallago.html

[Silurus]

They are aggressive, but not that aggressive. I suppose one runs the risk of getting bitten by one once in a while (although I think that one has more to fear from Channa micropeltes when wading than Wallago), although I have not heard of anyone being bitten by one in all of my field work in Asia (the locals also do not seem unduly worried about getting bitten by one).

The website is also confusing two species of Wallago. Tapah is the name given to W. leerii, not W. attu (which are known as boal, among many other names).

[snookman]

thanks for the quick reply...

[beng]

Strangely the tapah has never turned up in Singapore waters, where fish from all over the world have been introduced. One might expect that given Singapore's geographical position within the Tapah's native range, it might have been introduced there, as have other regional but locally non-native fish like the giant snakehead (Channa micropeltes) and the featherback/belida knife fishes (Chitala sp.) and the arowana. Even Arapaima gigas from South America has cropped up in disused quarry ponds and reservoirs.

Before the creation of man-made reservoirs and lakes, Singapore lacked the kind of big water bodies it might live in, but once those were created Channa micropeltes appeared in them, probably introduced from the aquarium trade or by illegal anglers. Various large cyprinids were also introduced, and more recently the authorities, following Florida's example, introduced the fast-breeding and highly predatory South American peacock bass (Cichla spp.) as a sport fish, which has had a noticeably disasterous effect on the ecology, and it has been introduced in Malaysia as well.

Anyway i read in British colonial era books that the tapah used to gorw to 600 pounds in the big rivers in Malaya and would eat large prey like dogs, monkeys, and the occasional small child. However now because of fishing pressure and other factors they never grow so big.

[Silurus]

Strangely the tapah has never turned up in Singapore waters, where fish from all over the world have been introduced

It's extinct in Singapore. As are 40% of the freshwater fish species there.

and the occasional small child

The tapah does not eat children. Period.

[bngowe]

and the occasional small child

The tapah does not eat children. Period.[/quote]

if it was that large.. (600 lbs or so) why can't it eat children? seems like catfish will eat anything.. only way that i would see it as not being possible is that most small children aren't super great swimmers. I guess you mean they don't usually attack children.=)

[fossa]

Hello there, Im doing some research on Wallago attu and am curious about these tales of attacks, does anybody know where I might find the references to this in old colonial sources/books that have been mentioned? Anyone know where I can find these sources? any help would be fantastic. Jody

[Stackdeck]

I doubt there is any useful info on attacks on people , none have been proven. Also aggression-wise , Wallago leeri seems more aggresive and bold. My attu's bite occasionally when disturbed but the leeri's will bite anything that moves in the tank(including my fingers). From papers i've read on Wallago there have been mentions of attacks on ducks mousedeer and even dogs! But no humans

[MatsP]

Now, this is one of those difficult ones... I'm pretty sure that a small enough human child would get eaten if it's swimming in the water near the fish. But the question is really, how young a child do you let swim (freely) in a large enough body of water to hold such a large fish?

The same argument goes for other "maneating catfish". Most of them don't live in small ponds...

--
Mats

[Stackdeck]

Many of these stories usually pop up from rural villages so maybe the stories are either exaggerated or false. Like many of those piranha stories from the Amazon.

[Viktor Jarikov]

May be it was all but sensation+pay-looking "journalists", but there were publicized cases in Russia of large wels catfishes killing humans, even small-bodied adults. Mostly in Volga-river region. That's a real big river. Those cats were claimed to be 4-5 meters long and weighed ~300-400 kilograms.

Mostly, the yellow-press/sensationalist newspapers would publish the fish photos (some were caught after a dedicated all-out hunt) but I never remember seeing a ruler next to them

[RickE]

Here's an interesting quote:

'Writing in Naturalised Animals of the British Isles Sir Christopher Lever notes that it has a "distinctly sinister appearance". He goes on to describe the creature in some depth:
"The head, back and sides are usually some shade of greenish-black spotted with olive-green, and the underside is yellowy-white, with an indistinct blackish marbling; the head and back may sometimes be a deep velvety black and the sides occasionally take on a bronzy sheen. Two long barbels depending from the upper jaw, and four short ones from the lower jaw, help to give the catfish its name. There is no adipose fin, but an enormously elongated anal fin: a tiny dorsal fin is situated half-way between the bases of the pectoral and pelvic fins. The largest authenticated wels, taken from the river Dnieper in the Ukraine in the southern U.S.S.R., measured over 16 ft (5 m) in length and weighed 675 lb (306 kg); elsewhere in Europe and in England, however, the wels seldom exceeds 5 ft (152 cm) in length and 25 lb (11 kg) in weight."'