Catfish hunt pigeons in France

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/67959-catfish-hunt-pigeons-in-france

by narad • 14 years ago

98 28 14 years ago

gonzo• 14 years ago

why is this on HN?

davidw• 14 years ago

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.

yareally2• 14 years ago

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.

Since it wasn't posted here's the direct link to the research: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

Gmo• 14 years ago

Well, you could argue this is hacking on the side of the catfish.

trentlott• 14 years ago

So you can work it into the Powerpoint for your next VC pitch.

marshray• 14 years ago

So who is the pidgeon and who is the catfish in that situation?

thamer• 14 years ago

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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.

loboman• 14 years ago

Because it is interesting. Actually it is more interesting and novel than much of the other news items that you can see in the front page.

IheartApplesDix• 14 years ago

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.

ChuckMcM3• 14 years ago

Interesting adaptation of a non-native species.

mhb• 14 years ago

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.

ChuckMcM3• 14 years ago

"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.

kyberias• 14 years ago

Maybe it's the cat genes... ;)

gadders2• 14 years ago

How long until we start seeing anglers using pigeons (hopefully decoys) for bait?

WillyF3• 14 years ago

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.

gadders2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I'm a fly fisherman myself, so my response was partly tongue in cheek.

I had a vole-type fly as well, but never used it in anger. Biggest for me would be a fry/minnow imitation.

People always talk about pike taking ducklings, or duck's feet, but I agree saying a pigeon being taken would be cool.

jlgreco• 14 years ago

I wonder if you could fish for sharks with a fake floating duck (or pelican or whatever).

kposehn3• 14 years ago

I'm tempted to try.

jvermillard• 14 years ago

Hmm I live at 100 meter of this river, I think I need to spend more time watching and filming the pigeons.

bostonpete• 14 years ago

Does that make them catfish hunters...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_Hunter

kposehn3• 14 years ago

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 :)

WillyF3• 14 years ago

Do you have a picture of the fish?

yareally2• 14 years ago

It's a big fish:

http://www.kingsailfishmounts.com/UserFiles/northernpike.jpg

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).

oto_tot• 14 years ago

This reminds me a bit of one of my favorite episodes of this "X minus 1" old-time radio show.

http://www.podcasts.com/x_minus_one/episode/student_body_073...

Catfish hunt pigeons in France

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