page_title: Wels catfish
section_title: Diet
hierarchical_section_title: Wels catfish / Diet
caption_attribution_description: English: Silurus glanis albino (Wels catfish), 121 cm Čeština: Sumec velký albín (Silurus glanis), 121 cm Deutsch: Weißer europäischer Wels (Silurus glanis), 121&#160;cm
context_page_description: The wels catfish, also called sheatfish, is a species of large catfish native to wide areas of central, southern, and eastern Europe, in the basins of the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas. It has been introduced to Western Europe as a prized sport fish and is now found from the United Kingdom east to Kazakhstan and China and south to Greece and Turkey. It is a freshwater fish recognizable by its broad, flat head and wide mouth. Wels catfish can live for at least fifty years.
context_section_description: Like most freshwater bottom feeders, the wels catfish lives on annelid worms, gastropods, insects, crustaceans, and fish. Larger specimens have been observed to also eat frogs, mice, rats, aquatic birds such as ducks and can be cannibalistic. A study published by researchers at the University of Toulouse, France in 2012, documented individuals of this species in an introduced environment lunging out of the water to feed on pigeons on land. Out of the beaching behaviors observed and filmed in this study, 28% were successful in bird capture. Stable isotope analyses of catfish stomach contents using carbon 13 and nitrogen 15 revealed a highly variable dietary composition of terrestrial birds. This is likely the result of adapting their behavior to forage on novel prey in response to new environments upon its introduction to the Tarn River in 1983 since this type of behavior has not been reported within the native range of this species. They can also eat red worms in the fall, but only the river species.
caption: An albino Wels catfish.
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