''Channa harcourtbutleri'', the Burmese snakehead, is a species of snakehead

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

Inle Lake Inle Lake (, ), a freshwater lake located in the Nyaungshwe Township of Shan State, part of Shan Hills in Myanmar (Burma). It is the second largest lake in Myanmar with an estimated surface area of , and one of the highest at an elevation of ...

and surroundings in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. Locally called ''nga ohn-ma'', among aquarists it is considered one of the

dwarf snakeheads Dwarf snakehead is a term coined by aquarists to describe a group of ''Channa'' snakehead fishes growing to about maximum. They are found in freshwater habitats (often streams) in South and Southeast Asia, and southern China.Endruweit, M. (2017). ...

, but no significant import for aquarists is known. It is one of the smaller species of snakehead and has a standard length of up to . The specific name honors Sir

Harcourt Butler Sir Spencer Harcourt Butler (1 August 1869 – 2 March 1938) was an officer of the Indian Civil Service who was the leading British official in Burma for much of his career, serving as Lieutenant-Governor (1915–17 and 1922–23) and later Go ...

, a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

governor in the region. This was for a long time considered to be a junior synonym of '' Channa gachua''. In fact, both species closely resemble each other. The article on its revalidation only mentions three discriminating features, such as the missing

ocellus A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-l ...

in the

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through c ...

of a juvenile ''Channa harcourtbutleri''. It is suspected to be a

mouthbrooder Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a va ...

and eats a wide range of foods, including

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and cuticle made of chiti ...

s and small fish, but unlike in some relatives, no

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-frog" ''Triadobatrachus'' is ...

References

;Sources * * *

External links

*
snakeheads.org
harcourtbutleri Fish described in 1918 Taxa named by Nelson Annandale {{Anabantiformes-stub