Silurus mento

The body is elongated, longitudinally flattened in the front and laterally flattened in the back. The head is medium-large. The mouth is large and subsuperior. The oral fissure is shallow and only extends to the vertical below the front edge of the eye. The eyes are small and located in the front and upper middle of the head. The interorbital space is wide and flat. The lower jaw protrudes from the upper jaw. The upper and lower jaws have fine hair-like teeth, forming a wide tooth belt, and the center of the vomerine tooth belt is discontinuous. The front and rear nostrils are far apart. The front nostril is short tubular, and the back nostril is round. The mandibular whiskers are short and extend back to the starting point of the pectoral fin; the chin whiskers are shorter than the mandibular whiskers.
The dorsal fin is short, without hard spines, and the starting point is located vertically above the rear end of the pectoral fin rays. The anal fin is long and connected to the caud

The Kunming catfish is endemic to China and is only found in Dianchi Lake in Kunming, Yunnan Province.

Kunming catfish (scientific name: Silurus mento), foreign name Kunming-lakecatfish, belongs to the genus Silurus of the family Siluridae of the order Siluriformes, and is endemic to China.

Kunming catfish is a carnivorous fish that likes to live in lakeshores with abundant aquatic plants. It hides at the bottom of the water during the day and is active in the morning and evening to look for food.

Kunming catfish was originally a common fish in Dianchi Lake and one of the edible economic fish. Due to the rapid increase in the population around the origin, a large amount of domestic sewage was discharged into the lake, causing the lake water to become eutrophic; secondly, industrial wastewater was injected into the lake, causing the water quality to deteriorate, and then long-term overfishing; at the same time, the introduction of some other fish species into the lake and other factors have caused the population of Kunming catfish to decrease sharply. It has been almost extinct since the 1970s.

Listed in the second level of the "List of Nationally Protected Wildlife in China".

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