The “giant man-eating mutant catfish” mystery.
August 16, 2007 by Jase
Filed under About:Oddness, About:Stuff
An email recently doing the rounds in China tells the story of the capture of a giant catfish caught in a reservoir in Guandong. The story goes that several people had mysteriously died swimming there and that they had investigated in the reasons to these unexplained death and found this beast:
A 3 metre long “man-eating” catfish whose head was 1 meter wide. The email also said that they had found the remains of a man inside so, due to fear of the story impacting on local tourism, the government had placed an embargo on the news.
A giant mutant catfish or a whale shark? The government say whale shark, the locals say man eating mutant catfish. More infomation about the possible hoax and pictures of the dissection at Shanghaiist
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Whale sharks have some pretty distinct markings and physiology. While I can see how people might think it’s a catfish when sitting on land like that, there’s no questions it’s a whale shark. Pretty impressive, still. The whale shark is the largest living fish, if I’m not mistaken.
Try to read the original news in Chinese here:
http://gd.southcn.com/photo/200607280022.htm
The whale shark was being prepared as specimen show-case in some aquarium in China.