Researchers have found a tiny subterranean catfish rarely ever seen by humans in Kerala, India.
The catfish, named "Kryptoglanis shajii," lives in the Western Ghats mountain range in Kerala India, and has such a strange skeletal structure researchers are having a hard time identifying it, according to a School of Arts and Sciences press release.
"The more we looked at the skeleton, the stranger it got," said John Lundberg, Drexel's resident fish zoologist and a professor in the university, according to the release. "The characteristics of this animal are just so different that we have a hard time fitting it into the family tree of catfishes."
The fish has a number of defining skeletal features, like a bulging lower jaw, similar to that of a bulldog.
Humans rarely get a glimpse of the tiny catfish, and it can only be found in on location in the Western Ghats mountain range.
The tiny fish is just 4 inches, smaller than the average adult's pinky finger. Its diet consists of small invertebrates and insect larvae, according to the release.
Though the fish lives underground, it has been spotted occasionally in the springs, wells and in the flooded rice paddies of the region, according to the release.
"The more we looked at the skeleton, the stranger it got," Lundberg said. "The characteristics of this animal are just so different that we have a hard time fitting it into the family tree of catfishes."
From the outside, Kryptoglanis shajii looks like other catfish, but after researchers took a look inside the fish they found some surprising discoveries, Lundberg said.
Lungberg and his colleagues discovered that the fish is missing a number of bony elements by using digital radiography and high-definition CAT scans.
The big surprise however was that the shapes of some of Kryptoglanis' bones were unique compared to other fish species.
A number of individual bones in the catfish's face are "modified," which gives it a compressed front end with a bulging lower jaw, similar to a bulldog's snout, according to the release.
The tiny fish also has four rows of conical, sharp-tipped teeth. These unique bone structures has researchers speculating that there is a functional purpose behind the abnormality.
"In dogs, that was the result of selective breeding," Lundberg said. "In Kryptoglanis, we don't know yet what in their natural evolution would have led to this modified shape."
Research was published recently in the journal Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters.
Researchers were not able to definitively conclude why the catfish is so unique, or what species it counts as its closest relative, according to the release.
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