Excerpt from American Catfishes: Habits, Culture, and Commercial Importance

It is one of the hardiest of fishes, will care for itself and even thrive in the muddiest of stagnant waters. It will breed readily and will endure complacently every hard ship of drought, extremes of temperature, and lack of food.

Every trait of our catfish bespeaks its stagnant mud-loving nature; dusky in color, sluggish, and blundering, furnished with long and tactile barbels, a shallow, slowly drained pond, furnished with an occasional deep-mud Hole, will suit admirably the needs of the fish. If the water does become warm in the summer, the catfish will survive; knowing how to survive is one of its especial virtues. In a 3-foot aquarium at fillege about a dozen 9-inch catfish were kept during very warm weather, the room temperature often in the nineties and the water changed but once a day, with but few fatal results. Should the air supply in the water fail, trust the fish to care for itself. It will come to the surface, leisurely renew the air in its swim bladder, and even, frog 1ike or turtle-like, swallow air in bulk, trusting to stomach respiration. Of undoubted respiratory value, moreover, must be the scaleless, highly vascular skin, so important in the breathing economy of the frogs. Should the pond dry, and the whole pond basin be serried with mud cracks, the catfish will lie dormant for days, even for weeks. It has been found in a clod of mud, which served as a cocoon, until softened by the return of the water. In winter the catfish, like frogs, and unlike many of its neighbors, appears to hibernate. In November it becomes sluggish and refuses food, and early in Decem ber buries itself in the deepest ooze of the pond. It does not reappear till the first sharp thunderstorm in February or March. Then the fish are seen, thin and ravenous, ap proaching the shore so closely that their heads ripple the surface. So fearless are they in early spring in Central Park that they come in schools in shallow water and will take food almost from the hand.

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