Giant Man-eating Catfish Found

[Squidman]

Its gonna eat you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my cell phone takes pretty good pictures!that poor poor thing.. laying in the middle of the streets being cut up and bleeding everywhere.. and being touched by a million old asian mencreepy..

 

[confusion]

The Atlanta Aquarium has four whale sharks in captivity. From what my LFS was saying, apparently they keep dying before they are full grown, which makes it kind of sad they are keeping them in captivity.

Keep in mind that these were headed for the dinner table. OTOH, they probably went out and caught another one for the dinner table. The 2 males the aquarium had died. The two original females are still going well, I believe. I suspect there isn't a lot of research and experience to draw on when keeping such big animals in an enclosed tank, so they're going to make mistakes. Their mistakes just happen to be very big and very noticeable. I believe I heard that the 6.2M gallon tank that they're in has somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 fish. So, they're doing an amazing job most of the time. Hopefully the new guys will stay healthy. I really love going to see them - they are really amazing.

How big was the whale shark in the pic?

Based on the pic, it looks to be between roughly 2x to 3x the height of the guy next to it. Assuming he's about 5.5' tall, that would make it somewhere between 11' and 16.5' long. I say split the difference and call it 13.75' long.

 

[GuppyDude]

I don't think it's even staged, they do eat whale shark in the Philipines and other regions of the orient, probably not an uncommon sight at all. I wouldn't have expected the story to be so easily swallowed over there.

 

[Scotch_Egg]

Im still unsure that it was a whale shark.

How big was the whale shark in the pic?

It was 3 meters long 1 metre wide.

 

[Matty P]

That is HUGE!

 

[raptorrex]

It's not a whale shark, it's a catfish without barbels. They were probably pulled off by the desperate victims being swallowed...

well it looks like any other Whale Shark, you can find on the net or in books.

whale sharks dont eat plankton, i thought they eat krill D:

Huh, whale sharks don't eat humans, they eat plankton.

Actually they eat both.

It feeds on phytoplankton, macro-algae, plankton, krill and small nektonic life, such as small squid or vertebrates.

- Wikipedia

cant see human in the list from Wikipedia!!! biggest thing they take are [size=-1]mackerel.[/size]