A selection of random Wallago questions

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Lycosid
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A selection of random Wallago questions

Post by Lycosid »

So I'm beginning to draw catfish (simple line drawings, left lateral view normally, suitable for diagrams but not in any way art) and I've been trying to get right. Besides the fact that it's got a weird mouth and a body so long that by the time I've drawn the head large enough to get the detail I want I'm out of paper to draw the body, I've run across a few oddities in the reference photos.

Obviously, Wallago have a nice set of maxillary barbels. Photos of young specimens show smaller but still noticeable chin barbels (no idea if they are mandibular or mental - there's only the one set). Photos of big specimens (which are distinguishable even without scale bars by the shift from eel-like to potbellied-eel-like morphology) show either very small chin barbels or none. I do mean none. Mekong giants show something similar, where the barbels reduce to being invisible in most photos at large body sizes. However, I also wonder because a lot of large Wallago in photos have been subject to rough handling (some are dead in fish markets) and so I wonder if they have lost barbels that way. So, does anyone know whether healthy adult Wallago retain chin barbels, and if so are they just super-tiny?

Now a scaling question. The split of Wallago into Wallago and Wallagonia seems to have confused some maximum length records. The Cat-e-log has identical sizes for both species, which could be right or it could be reflective of confusing records between species. Fishbase claims that Wallago reaches larger sizes than . Wikipedia (which I checked really just because it's so easy) claims the opposite - that Wallagonia leerii is the big boy and all large records for Wallago are the result of confusion between the species. Anyone have better, clearer, data?

(In a hypothetical world where I am happier with my catfish drawings I will arrange some of the big bruisers, properly scaled, into a composite image, perhaps with a large shark for scale, and print it as a poster for my office wall. So getting the maximum size right would be nice.)
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Re: A selection of random Wallago questions

Post by Shane »

Lycosid,
Just flipping through the channels and came across a National Geographic special on Wallago. Monster Fish season 4 episode 5 "Jungle Jaws."
Should be easy to find.
-Shane
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Lycosid
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Re: A selection of random Wallago questions

Post by Lycosid »

Shane wrote: 04 Aug 2017, 16:35 Lycosid,
Just flipping through the channels and came across a National Geographic special on Wallago. Monster Fish season 4 episode 5 "Jungle Jaws."
Should be easy to find.
-Shane
Great! That should provide lots more reference material. Thanks for the tip.
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