“Who am I kiddin’, who am I foolin’/When they be like, ‘What’s up Fatlip?,’ And I say ‘Coolin.'” Photo: Conservation International
Although we humans do like to think that we know everything, every now and then Mother Nature proves that we most certainly do not. In 2022, that happened in a major way when biologists from Conservation International conducted a survey in Alto Mayo, a Nature preserve in Peru. Among the many new species they discovered was a bizarre looking blob-headed catfish.
You’ve likely heard of the hideously cute blobfish already — its sad, pink, drooling face has been all over the internet in past years — but the newly discovered catfish is not related. While the O.G. blobfish (which, it should be noted, does not look the same at the bottom of the sea as it does when we pull them to the surface) belongs to the Psychrolutidae family, while the blob-headed catfish belongs to the Chaetostoma family.
It’s a species of bristlemouth armored catfish, and has a feature that the researchers hadn’t seen in catfish before. As of this writing, the function of the giant floppy nose isn’t known, due to the lack of taxonomic information. The blob-headed catfish was just one of many new species they found in the nature preserve. Using a variety of nets, including trawl nets, cast nets, and trammel nets, researchers found 68 species of fish. Eighteen of them were new to science.
Alto Mayo is an amazing place, spanning nearly 800,000 hectares in the San Martín region of Peru. It’s made up of protected forest land, and houses a staggering amount of life. Although scientists have done quite a bit of looking around in the northwestern region of Alto Mayo, the central region is less understood. That’s why Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program expedition set its sights on it, and those efforts paid off.
“The expedition gathered information on biodiversity and ecosystem health,” Conservation International wrote, “to help guide the development of a new ecological corridor that will connect the Alto Mayo Protected Forest with the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area — strengthening a growing network of protected areas in San Martín and neighboring regions.”
The data they collected during the expedition will help the “Indigenous communities and other local stakeholders to identify priority areas for protection” and “together, they aim to establish a management plan that protects Alto Mayo’s most vulnerable species while enhancing livelihoods for the people who live there.”
