The end of the mythical giant catfish
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Silurus
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Lycosid
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Re: The end of the mythical giant catfish
If this paper is accepted there will need to be a revision to the information on the Wels species entry on this site, as well as a change in the answer to question 2 ("What is the largest catfish in the world?") in the Catfish FAQ in the Help section of this site. After all, this paper gives 2.73 m as the maximum actual length for a Wels which drops it below Brachyplatystoma filamentosum, Pangasianodon gigas, and Silurus soldatovi (according to a size-sorting search on this site).
I happen to find the arguments advanced here convincing, but that's not my call to make.
Interestingly, S. soldatovi may suffer from the same problem since Fishbase gives a maximum length of 4 m and a maximum weight of 40 kg (both length and weight are from the same 1949 Russian manuscript). That requires an order of magnitude error on the weight (e.g., the weight must have been 400 kg) to be reasonable. (The paper above estimates that a 306 kg S. glanis might be as long as 3.95 m, which would make a 4 m and 400 kg S. soldatovi reasonable, although the numbers would look suspiciously rounded.) It also appears that the maximum length for S. soldatovi comes from one of the papers that propagated the incorrect length for S. glanis. I don't want to crap all over older works since I doubt the modern world (especially in Europe) harbors many freshwater fish at their maximum biologically-possible lengths and older works may be the only window into the sizes these species could reach if left alone but older papers are also sometimes uncritical of fish tales or careless about standardizing measurements. (For comparison, Fishbase cites works from the 1999, 2001, and 2003 for the maximum lengths and weights for the other two giant catfish I listed above.)
I happen to find the arguments advanced here convincing, but that's not my call to make.
Interestingly, S. soldatovi may suffer from the same problem since Fishbase gives a maximum length of 4 m and a maximum weight of 40 kg (both length and weight are from the same 1949 Russian manuscript). That requires an order of magnitude error on the weight (e.g., the weight must have been 400 kg) to be reasonable. (The paper above estimates that a 306 kg S. glanis might be as long as 3.95 m, which would make a 4 m and 400 kg S. soldatovi reasonable, although the numbers would look suspiciously rounded.) It also appears that the maximum length for S. soldatovi comes from one of the papers that propagated the incorrect length for S. glanis. I don't want to crap all over older works since I doubt the modern world (especially in Europe) harbors many freshwater fish at their maximum biologically-possible lengths and older works may be the only window into the sizes these species could reach if left alone but older papers are also sometimes uncritical of fish tales or careless about standardizing measurements. (For comparison, Fishbase cites works from the 1999, 2001, and 2003 for the maximum lengths and weights for the other two giant catfish I listed above.)