Channa marulius
Bullseye Snakehead
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Collection Details
Specimens
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Records
Taxonomic Hierarchy
Actinopterygii (Ray-finned Fishes)
Perciformes (Perciformes, Also Called the Acanthopteri)
Channidae (Snakeheads)
Channa
Channa marulius (Bullseye Snakehead)
Description
This species account was compiled from
FishBase (Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2025. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. www.fishbase.org, version 04/2025.)
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Characters
Body shape: elongated.
Distribution
Asia: India to China, south to Thailand and Cambodia (Ref. 12693) and Pakistan (Ref. 4833).
Habitat Associations
Freshwater. benthopelagic. Found in: streams, lakes, mangroves.
Biology
Adults occur in sluggish or standing water in canals, lakes, and swamps (Ref. 12693). Inhabit waters with submerged aquatic vegetation (Ref. 12693). Usually found only in deep pools in rivers and occasionally in lakes. They enter flooded forest (Ref. 9497). Carnivorous and subsist on fish, frogs, snakes, insects, earthworms and tadpoles (Ref. 1479). There are reports of this species taking water birds, snakes, and rodents. Males are territorial. May bite when caught (Elliot Bligh, pers. comm., 2001).
Max length: 183.0 cm TL; common length: 46.0 cm TL; max weight: 30000 g.
Reproductive mode: dioecism; fertilization: external; guarders (nesters); parental care: biparental. Builds floating nest of weeds and leaves where the orange-yellow eggs are deposited. Eggs hatch in 36 to 48 hours and fry remain in the nest for about 10 days after hatching. Parents guards the fry for about a month.
IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern (LC), assessed 2009-10-06. Resilience: Medium (K=0.23).
Commercial or Environmental Importance
Fisheries: commercial; gamefish; aquaculture: commercial; aquarium: public aquariums.
References
Pethiyagoda, R. (1991) Freshwater fishes of Sri Lanka. The Wildlife Heritage Trust of Sri Lanka, Colombo. 362 p.
Shrestha, T.K. (1990) Resource ecology of the Himalayan waters. Curriculum Development Centre, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. 645 p.
Rainboth, W.J. (1996) Fishes of the Cambodian Mekong. FAO species identification field guide for fishery purposes. FAO, Rome, 265 p.
Kottelat, M. (2013) The fishes of the inland waters of Southeast Asia: a catalogue and core bibliography of the fishes known to occur in freshwaters, mangroves and estuaries. The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 2013 (Suppl. 27):1-663.
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