Fish Bites Dog

By accident or design, man seems de ermined to upset the delicate balance of nature in Florida. The water hyacinth, imported by a flower lover in 1884, has clogged canals all over the southern end of the peninsula. Clearing operations cost more than $1,000,000 annually. The 30-in. Bufo toad (Bufo marinus), introduced to the Miami area in the 1950s to eat insects, now feeds on the young of native toads, and hundreds of dogs have died after biting into the Bufo's poisonous neck sacks.

The Red-Whiskered Bulbul, a crested Asian visitor freed from a rare-bird farm by a hurricane ten years ago, has begun to multiply. To the alarm of local growers, it has a marked preference for sweet, ripe fruit.

Florida's newest menace is an im probable creature called Clarias bat-rachus, the Asian walking catfish.

Equipped with auxiliary breathing or gans,* the 2-ft. fish can live out of water for hours and can propel itself along the ground on its stubby but muscular pectoral fins. It was introduced by a fish farmer several years ago near Fort Lauderdale, and quickly infiltrated the state's broad, interconnected drainage system. When scattered specimens began appearing in the canals and ponds of Palm Beach County in 1967, they were largely ignored. But this spring, astounded Fort Lauderdale residents discovered catfish scuttling across their lawns at night and the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission assigned two scientists to investigate.

Pugnacious Forager. After studying five mature walking catfish, Biologists Vernon Ogilvie and Robert Goodrick issued an alarming report. The fish can jump 4 ft. out of water and move overland at will. It sleeps during daylight hours but becomes "very active" at night or when it is disturbed. It is so strong and slippery that it is virtually impossible to handle. One specimen, placed in a 70-gal. tank with other fish, promptly attacked and killed a fish of equal size. "All other fish in the tank gave the Clarias a wide berth," the scientists noted, "a piranha being no exception."

In some isolated ponds where the biologists found the walking catfish, it had already become the dominant species; in canals, it was fast gaining the upper hand over such native species as bass, brim and ordinary catfish. It seems to thrive in brackish as well as fresh water, and eats shrimp, crayfish, small minnows--practically anything that happens along. When biologists poison its ponds, it indignantly leaps from the water and starts across country during the daytime, sometimes dying of sunburn in the process. On land, where it forages nocturnally for snails and pine needles, the catfish is at its most pugnacious. There are even some far-out reports that it has attacked curious dogs sniffing at it.

These prodigious feats have Floridians worried that the walking catfish will turn out to be the most formidable immigrant of them all. Other pests can often be controlled or eliminated. But, as Ogilvie and Goodrick note in their report: "A fish with the ability and inclination to leave the water and walk around is, to the best of our knowledge, unmanageable."

*A pair of treelike bony structures located above each gill cavity, the organs absorb oxygen from the air to supplement the oxygen normally taken in from water passing through the gills.

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