What’s up my nature-curious friend!
Yes…I’m sitting in a bunch of goose $#!t right now.
And I’m okay with that!
It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for nature:
Dorian really did a number on the Bahamas.
The Amazon rainforest is burning like crazy.
This Friday starts the global climate strikes.
You can find out more about that at: globalclimatestrike.net
And there was a really cool discover about
electricity conducting fishes
that you know I’m going to nerd-out about.
And of course, the ‘Chosen One’ and his administration
keep rolling back protections for wildlife and the environment.
So sometimes I like to just forget about all the crap
going on in the world and go spy on fishes.
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[underwater static]
I’m Koaw and this is Casual Outdoors Weekly
where we go over a nature activity
for you to do for the benefit of your health and happiness.
We also knock up our nature-smarts
just a little itty-bitty bitty bit.
We do that all under six minutes.
This week’s casual outdoors activity is to attract a catfish.
Catfishes are masters of chemoreception…that is,
they can smell really well.
Like us humans they have paired nostrils, or nares,
that have chemoreceptors for detecting chemicals,
but catfishes also have chemoreceptors in their barbels, or whiskers,
as well as other sensory pits,
which in some species extends along their entire body!
So yes... some catfishes can smell with their tail!
I kid you not.
That’s why I’ve rolled up some Charlie A One Catfish Dough
into some wire mesh.
I swam about 15 feet down or 4.5 meters for my metric friends,
and attached it this fish shelter in a lake.
This catfish dough smells terrible to us humans—
like you gag if you smell it.
Like [makes gagging noises] ...eh.
Yeah...not that bad.
But it’s absolutely alluring to a catfish.
Just like some blood or a rotting whale carcass attracts a great white!
It took about 45 minutes for this big yellow bullhead to show up.
And you can easily distinguish a yellow bullhead
from the other bullheads
because its ventral barbels, those lower ones, are white.
Plus it usually has a yellowish body.
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I was so happy to see this
big bullhead show up on camera!
Seriously! I’ve been swimming in this lake for decades
and I’ve caught a number of bullheads but
I never actually saw a big bullhead
while I was freediving or swimming around.
So it was so cool to see a nice adult on camera.
You could do this from shore
but it would require some patience.
Placing a camera in front of your bait is super easy.
As for bait, you can buy a $5 premade assortment
or even make your own.
Dog food and corn and flour
are a good start for that.
So I’d rate this as an Easy Breezy activity
that isn’t too expensive.
You just have to get the catfish bait.
And if you want to use a waterproof camera,
you can get a cheap one for 30 to 40 bucks. [ ♪ upbeat music starts ♪]
Nature is Nifty:
I saw a study come out last week that just…
I was so happy!
They discovered new electric eels!
Published in Nature Communications,
a group of scientists discovered
that there are actually at least three species
of electric eel and not just one in Greater Amazonia!
And one of the new species
produces a far more powerful jolt of electricity
than previously recorded in Electrophorus.
So basically, these scientists did their due diligence
in their genetic and morphological analyses
to confidentially say that Electrophorus has at least three species
that resulted from allopatric speciation,
or speciation that occurred from geographic barriers.
The first recognized species, described by Linnaeus long ago,
is aptly called Electrophorus electricus
and the new species are E. voltai and E. varii.
It went unnoticed that these were three separate species
for about two-and-a-half centuries
because these electric eels have similar body shapes,
lengths and colorations.
But under closer examination,
they found distinguishing physical characteristics
to separate the species that agreed with the genetic data.
They even measured the electric discharge of the new species, E. voltai,
giving off an 860 V discharge
which is more than 200 V higher
than previously recorded for Electrophorus!
That’d do some damage.
Check out these other photos I took recently
of some really cool fishes.
Isn’t that a beautiful rock bass?
Also I’m going to put a POLL on this video
with some absolutely ridiculous question.
But I’m testing out the poll feature. Please toss a vote up.
Spread some knowledge. Be Nature-heroic!
Thank you for watching!