The black arowana (''Osteoglossum ferreirai'') is a South American freshwater
bony fish
Osteichthyes (), popularly referred to as the bony fish, is a diverse superclass of fish that have skeletons primarily composed of bone tissue. They can be contrasted with the Chondrichthyes, which have skeletons primarily composed of cartilag ...
of the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
Osteoglossidae
Osteoglossidae is a family of large freshwater fish, which includes the arowanas and arapaima. The family contains two subfamilies Arapaiminae and Osteoglossinae, with a total of five living genera.
Osteoglossids are basal teleosts that origin ...
. Black arowanas are sometimes kept in
aquarium
An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...
s, but they are predatory and require a very large tank.
It is generally common,
but large numbers are caught as food and for the aquarium fish trade.
Etymology
The
specific name ''ferreirai'' is named in honour of
Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, the Portuguese-Brazilian naturalist who first reported this species.
Range and habitat
The black arowana is native to tropical South America where restricted to the
Rio Negro basin, including the
Branco River
The Branco River ( pt, Rio Branco; Engl: ''White River'') is the principal affluent of the Rio Negro from the north.
Basin
The river drains the Guayanan Highlands moist forests ecoregion.
It is enriched by many streams from the Tepui highlands w ...
.
Orinoco
The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...
basins, but whether this is a natural population or the result of introductions by humans is disputed.[
It is essentially a sedentary (non-migratory) species of blackwater habitats.][ During the dry season it mostly inhabits backwaters, marginal lagoons and small tributaries, but it is often seen in ]flooded forest
Freshwater swamp forests, or flooded forests, are forests which are inundated with freshwater, either permanently or seasonally. They normally occur along the lower reaches of rivers and around freshwater lakes. Freshwater swamp forests are found ...
s during the high water season.[
]
Description
The black arowana has an elongated body and a tapered tail. Their maximum total length is typically considered to be ,[ but there are reports of individuals up to .][ The juveniles are black with yellow markings down the length of the body, head and the tail. Once it reaches about , the markings disappear and the fish will develop a dark iridescent steel grey to blue coloration, hence its common name. Additionally, there are yellow and red outlining or the dorsal, caudal and tail fins. In contrast to the juveniles, adults are very similar to the ]silver arowana
The silver arowana (''Osteoglossum bicirrhosum'') is a South American freshwater bony fish of the family Osteoglossidae. Silver arowanas are sometimes kept in aquariums, but they are predatory and require a very large tank.
The generic name ' ...
(''O. bicirrhosum''), but the two species can be separated by meristics Meristics is an area of ichthyology and herpetology which relates to counting quantitative features of fish and reptiles, such as the number of fins or scales. A meristic (countable trait) can be used to describe a particular species of fish, or us ...
.arowana
Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the subfamily Osteoglossinae, also known as bony tongues (the latter name is now often reserved for Arapaiminae). In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongated body is covered by large, heavy sc ...
as dragonfish due to their unique appearance and believe they bring good luck.[
]
Behavior
South American arowanas are sometimes called ''water monkey'' or the ''monkey fish'', because they can jump out of the water to capture their prey
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...
. They usually swim near the water surface looking for food. Although it has been known to eat larger prey like small bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most ...
s and small monkeys,[Mikula, P. 2015: Fish and amphibians as bat predators. ]European Journal of Ecology
The ''European Journal of Ecology'' is an English-language, biannual, scientific journal founded in 2015. It publishes original, peer-reviewed papers (in categories like research articles, reviews, forum articles, policy directions) referring to a ...
1 (1): 71-80. doi: 10.1515/eje-2015-0010 their main diets consist of shrimps, insects, smaller fishes and other animals that float on the water surface, on which its draw-bridge-like mouth is exclusively adapted for feeding.
The females spawn during the high water season. The up to 210 eggs are mouthbrooded by the male and the young only fully released when about long.[
]
See also
* Asian arowana
The Asian arowana (''Scleropages formosus'') comprises several phenotypic varieties of freshwater fish distributed geographically across Southeast Asia. While most consider the different varieties to belong to a single species, work by Pouyaud ...
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q916939
Osteoglossidae
Taxa named by Robert H. Kanazawa
Fish described in 1966