Having been an angler (mostly fly) for almost my entire life, I've seen things like this fairly often.
Fish are very attracted to surface animals in the water due to their relative inability to escape once in the water. Ducks make easy prey and watering birds in the shallows are only moderately more difficult. Probably one of the most voracious shallow-water predators is the Northern Pike, which I've seen catch birds, mice and other animals many times while fishing in Canada. At my Dad's house in northern California, we see Bass suck under small ducklings many times a year.
Unlike the Catfish, Bass, Pike and other shallow water predators have specific behavior for lying in wait. They will stop in the water, use the pectoral fins to hold stable and then curl their tail to one side. This allows them to rapidly straighten their bodies and blast forward in one swift stroke to seize prey. Note in the video that the catfish do not employ this - they make a snapping/sucking motion with their jaws to draw the prey in.
One of the largest Bass I ever caught was hooked using a fly I tied, made to look like a Robin. I had seen a 14+ lb. Largemouth attempting to eat robins that were landing on lily pads. I tied the fly over about 1 week and caught it on a gorgeous Sunday morning just after the sun came over the trees :)
Pike grow to a relatively large size; lengths of 150 centimetres (59 in) and weights of 25 kilograms (55 lb) are not unheard of. The heaviest specimen known so far was caught in an abandoned stone quarry, in Germany, in 1983. She (the majority of all pikes over 8 kg or 18 lb are females) was 147 cm (58 in) long and weighed 31 kg (68 lb). The longest pike ever recorded was 152 cm (60 in) long and weighed 28 kg (62 lb).
Most flies used in fly fishing incorporate some sort of feathers, but that's usually to imitate an insect or fish. The largest "terrestrial" that I've ever imitated is a mouse (the fly consisted of some other type of non-mouse fur--rabbit and deer). This is typically done at night, and it's a lot of fun.
I know people who have seen fish eat ducklings, and I've seen fish try to grab damselflies out of the branches of trees. But watching a fish grab an entire pigeon off of the shore is pretty cool.
As a note, the vole or mice flies are fantastic for Trout streams, Bass and Pike. Big rainbows or Brown Trout will snap up a mouse fly on the surface - draw it past with a very rapid staccato motion to make waves on the surface.
Then watch their wakes rocket to the fly. Total blast :)
The article also mentions that these are non-native, but why is that relevant? Is the suggestion that in an area in which catfish are native, they wouldn't exhibit this behavior?
There must be areas in which native catfish are hungry and in proximity to birds. Maybe it occurs there too.
"There must be areas in which native catfish are hungry and in proximity to birds. Maybe it occurs there too."
Its the combination of birds being available and regular food not being available and then one has to be successful enough at it to survive. Catfish are pretty opportunistic feeders, which is perhaps why they would consider birds to be food if they were otherwise starving.
Because someone found it interesting, and it's not an article about a poisonous topic like politics/economics. I didn't find it terribly interesting myself (the article was too short), so I did not vote for it, but it doesn't seem likely to generate boring/repetitive discussions, either.
Yeah, something fresh and unique article wise can never hurt. I always figured the mentality of a hacker was to be curious about everything in the world around them, even if it's not directly related to start ups, programming and technology.
Curiosity leads to wanting to figure out why things are as they are and how they can be improved. Never know when something seemingly independent can lead to some other inspiration.
However, I do agree the content is lacking and it says that the actual research behind it is on an open site (though no link). Would have been nice to link that instead of the above link.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I would say the catfish entrepreneurs are eating them for lunch. :-) And hey, after you've demonstrated that with the right motivation a fish can learn to eat adult birds, how much of a stretch is it to believe that our team can pull of this idea with your backing?
Because HN is moving away from being a an admin dominated board for promotion to being a community driven site for curiosity. I noticed the admins kind of gave up about 2-3 months ago. Chances are they're using a private site for internal news of interest.
Fish are very attracted to surface animals in the water due to their relative inability to escape once in the water. Ducks make easy prey and watering birds in the shallows are only moderately more difficult. Probably one of the most voracious shallow-water predators is the Northern Pike, which I've seen catch birds, mice and other animals many times while fishing in Canada. At my Dad's house in northern California, we see Bass suck under small ducklings many times a year.
Unlike the Catfish, Bass, Pike and other shallow water predators have specific behavior for lying in wait. They will stop in the water, use the pectoral fins to hold stable and then curl their tail to one side. This allows them to rapidly straighten their bodies and blast forward in one swift stroke to seize prey. Note in the video that the catfish do not employ this - they make a snapping/sucking motion with their jaws to draw the prey in.
One of the largest Bass I ever caught was hooked using a fly I tied, made to look like a Robin. I had seen a 14+ lb. Largemouth attempting to eat robins that were landing on lily pads. I tied the fly over about 1 week and caught it on a gorgeous Sunday morning just after the sun came over the trees :)