The wolf’s cousin
Maybe it’s one of God’s own drunken prototypes, or maybe it’s just one of the funkiest evolutionary turn-ups from South America. Either way, it’s awesome.
WORDS: NATHAN HILL
Tarumania walkerae is an oddball keeper’s dream.
GATHER ROUND, you lovers of quirk and ugliness, for there’s a fish you need to see. A characiform like no other, it’s a species that’s yet to hit the trade — assuming it ever does — but it’s arrival will herald a level of biotopery never seen before.
This is Tarumania walkerae, a fish first found two decades ago, but only recently investigated any further. At a glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s some sort of cobitid, with its Pangio-like looks, but this lives a continent away from those wriggling loaches, and is more closely related to wolf fish like Hoplias, something confirmed very recently when researchers obtained Tarumania’s genomic data.