News of a particularly unfriendly bloodsucking species of fish are being spotted in a Pennsylvania county, witch has sparked concern among officials that the voracious predators could disrupt the local ecosystem.
The northern snakehead is an aggressive species that typically eats other fish. Nicknamed the “frankenfish,” the invasive species could wreak havoc on the environment if it’s allowed to spread.
The cannibalistic ecology-wrecker has no lack of scary features. For one, it is said to be able to “walk” on land – although it’s actually more like wriggling or snake-like slithering and it mostly does so to get back to water, not to crawl into your house and murder you while you sleep.
Should snakeheads become established in North American ecosystems, their predatory behavior could drastically disrupt food webs and ecological conditions, thus forever changing native aquatic systems by modifying the array of native species.
The snakehead’s young are also believed to start their lives by feeding on their mother, while it’s still weak and incapable of hunting.
Snakeheads are survivors, capable of breathing on land for several days and weathering low-oxygen environments. The particular kind now caught in Lancaster County is native to China, Russia and Korea, but snakeheads were imported into the USA in the early 2000s.
RT.com / Crickey Conservation Society 2018.
Invasive species?
Destroying the fish in the Mississippi River systems?