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Guide to Patagonia's Monsters & Mysterious beings

I have written a book on this intriguing subject which has just been published.
In this blog I will post excerpts and other interesting texts on this fascinating subject.

Austin Whittall


Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Real Creatures - Pouched Lamprey

 

weird but real animals

Another strange but real animal that can be found in Patagonia is the Pouched Lamprey or Geotria australis Gray, shown in the image below.

Patagonian lamprey

Pouched Lamprey (Geotria australis). From [1].

This lamprey lives only in the Southern Hemisphere, in Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina (just like the Nothofagus trees, it is a relict of the ancient continent of Gondwana).

It is an anadromic species, that is, it breeds in fresh water and then migrates to the sea where it lives and matures.

This lamprey can be found in Patagonia, both in Chile and Argentina and its average length is about 50 cm (20 inches).

They swim upstream to breed (like salmons) and sometimes they exit the water by wriggling up the bank to bypass obstacles to migration. During their brief life as adults in freshwater, they stop feeding and die shortly after spawning.[3][4]

It is vulnerable to the salmonids (brown, rainbow, brook trout and salmon) that were introduced into Patagonia in the early 1900s.

Argentine Explorer Ramón Lista, was the first to report them in Lake Argentino, Lake Nahuel Huapi in the 1880s.[2]

Bibliography.

[1] Photograph in an Online Gallery Here, the original source is: Pez Raro del Limay - Novedades, see it Here.
[2] Berg, C.,(1895) Sobre peces de agua dulce nuevos ó poco conocidos de la República Argentine. Anales del Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires. B. Aires: Imprenta Juan Alsina. Vol. IV. pp. 5.
[3] Geotria Australis
[4] Geotria Australis Gray 1851



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Patagonian Monsters

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