{"id":81541,"date":"2025-08-19T15:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/81541\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T15:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T15:56:09","slug":"unprecedented-video-shows-catfish-climbing-straight-up-a-waterfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/81541\/","title":{"rendered":"Unprecedented Video Shows Catfish Climbing Straight Up a Waterfall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the wild, catfish lead elusive lives, evading detection from scientists hoping to learn more about their lifestyles. And so, when police received reports of weird catfish clumps at the bottom of a waterfall, they immediately contacted a team of scientists to do some detective work.<\/p>\n<p>After watching the fish for about 20 hours, the researchers arrived at the conclusion that these Rhyacoglanis paranensis\u2014an orange-and-black species of bumblebee catfish common to South America\u2014were scaling steep, vertical waterfalls as a team. A paper published August 8 in the <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jfb.70158\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Journal of Fish Biology<\/a> records this bizarre yet remarkable moment.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2000644620\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/catfish-horde-climbing-rocks.gif\" alt=\"Catfish Horde Climbing Rocks\" width=\"760\" height=\"428\"\/>\u00a9 Manoela M. F. Marinho <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say it was a delightful surprise to all of us, crazy about fish, to witness all the tiny bumblebee catfishes gathering in a huge effort to climb the rocky walls\u2014a great moment!\u201d Manoela M. F. Marinho, study lead author and a biologist at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, told Gizmodo in an email.<\/p>\n<p> The secret life of catfish hikers, explained <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2000644627\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/bumblebee-catfish-climbing-up.gif\" alt=\"Bumblebee Catfish Climbing Up\" width=\"229\" height=\"407\"\/>\u00a9 Manoela M. F. Marinho <\/p>\n<p>The catfish started their climb after 6 p.m., gathering by the thousands at the bottom of small waterfalls. The steeper the climb, the more the fish appeared to wiggle solo; some even slithered upside down across the ceilings of crevices. More teamwork was on display near flatter rocks, where the catfish climbed on top of each other to get over the rock.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers aren\u2019t entirely sure why the fish are engaging in this behavior. Based on dissections and the timing of the sighting, they believe the catfish were likely migrating upriver to reproduce. They also didn\u2019t appear to have eaten. But this behavior does appear to be instinctual: \u201cThey also climbed artificial objects, such as our plastic pail,\u201d the paper reports.<\/p>\n<p>The study demonstrates the value of field observations in ecology and how <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/horrifyingly-huge-new-stick-insect-discovered-exactly-where-you-think-2000637359\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">chasing down strange reports<\/a> can lead to valuable and unexpected discoveries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I\u2019ve always thought catfish were cool. There\u2019s something oddly charming about their flat, sausage-like build. And now that we know they\u2019re good hikers? Even cooler.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the wild, catfish lead elusive lives, evading detection from scientists hoping to learn more about their lifestyles.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49120,49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-81541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-aquatic-ecology","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}