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Fish With "Hands" And "Feet" From Paraguay

L

littleblackduck

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Source: http://frankwarren.blogspot.com/2006/01 ... -feet.html

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at taxonomic websites of Paraguayan fish (and Amazonian--just in case).

Urls:
http://www.mongabay.com/fish/data/ecosy ... 0River.htm

http://www.amazonian-fish.co.uk/indexgast.html

I couldn't find anything that looked remotely like the fish pictured on theses sites or the web, although admittedly, I just looked at the groups very quickly.

I couldn't find any other news articles on the fish either, except for the link to what appears to be the original source, on the source website, above:

http://www.infobae.com/notas/nota.php?I ... eccion=100

I hope somebody knows how to contact a friendly ichthyologist with sufficient knowledge of South American fish (or possibly extinct fish) to recognize the critter.

At the moment I am entertaining a suspicion that it is either a really good movie prop or the adult or fetus of a known species of bottom feeding, lobed fish. The proboscis is (Jimmy) Durantean in size and suggests that it feeds by snuffling around in mud (ventral mouth, not shown). The sturdy limbs/fins also suggest bottom locomotion.

Hope somebody can solve this mystery, but I am posting this under cryptids because if this thing were well-known it would be all over the public broadcasting systems of the world.

It's definitely a weird bird.
 
the fish in the picture is not a fake its a long nosed chimera fish , follow the links from the ft news story on the front page and theres a full explanation
 
AFAIK that picture isn't actually of the fish in the story, considering that i saw that picture at least several months ago (was it in the photo gallery that circulated last year of odd sea life supposedly washed up by the tsunami?)...

I'd be willing to bet that the fish they actually found looked nothing like the fish in the pic, and they just threw that pic in because it was the first "odd looking fish" picture they could find...

What it really was i don't know, but possibly some sort of Frogfish or Batfish? I've seen a picture of one of those bottom dwelling type of fish with very "leg-like" back fins that made it look almost exactly like how i imagine the fully transformed form of Lovecraft's Deep Ones... speaking of which, that "Strange Fish" site (altho it doesn't contain anything exactly like the one i saw before) has some pretty scary and freaky looking beasties on it:

http://www.thejump.net/id/bigfrogfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/Polka-dot-Batfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/northern-seadevil.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/atlantic-footballfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/lumpfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/wolffish.htm

(the second one of those is the closest one on there to the one i remember seeing...)
 
tonyblair11 said:
So I'm pretty sure the site you posted(FrankWarren) is bullshit. Not only did they steal the pic, but they made up a crappy story about fishermen finding it in a stream!!
Click to expand...

The site isn't BS - as has been said following the links from there gives you the original article of which the blog entry seems to be a reasonable translation:

30.01.2006

Dos paraguayos encontraron un pescado con manos y pies

Fueron a pescar a un riacho, tal como hacían todas las tardes, pero esta vez encontraron la sorpresa. Cuando lo pusieron en la tierra, comenzó a caminar

Un grupo de pescadores paraguayos se encontró con una enorme sorpresa cuando sacaron del riacho San Rafael, en el barrio de Zevallos Cué, en Asunción, dos pescados de color verde; uno de ellos tenía manos y pies.

Pero su sorpresa se agrandó cuando observaron que, al ponerlo sobre la tierra, comenzó a caminar hacia las aguas, informa el diario paraguayo Popular.

"Demasiado grande, me asusté al ver esas cosas. Agarramos la red y trajimos hasta casa, pero no sabemos qué es”, le contó uno de los protagonistas de esta historia al diario del país vecino.
Click to expand...

www.infobae.com/notas/nota.php?Idx=2355 ... eccion=100

and there is a comment on the blog:

Frank Warren said...

John Lereau writes in to inform us that the picture associated with this story has been seen before; apparently the source (Infobae.com) is using it as an "illustration" but failed to mention that.

Some quick research reveals that the pic is that of a "Long-nosed chimaera pup."

FW
Click to expand...

http://frankwarren.blogspot.com/2006/01 ... l#comments

What the actual creature is is another matter.
 
Yep, that picture of the long-nosed fish was used in the Tsunami hoax.
I remember seeing a program on underwater life, where they showed some fish that actually walked on the seabed. They had these fins which were long and thick and spread out into fin shape at the ends. But wether they would be able to hold themselves up in the same way on land I don't know.
 
nataraja said:
AFAIK that picture isn't actually of the fish in the story, considering that i saw that picture at least several months ago (was it in the photo gallery that circulated last year of odd sea life supposedly washed up by the tsunami?)...

I'd be willing to bet that the fish they actually found looked nothing like the fish in the pic, and they just threw that pic in because it was the first "odd looking fish" picture they could find...

What it really was i don't know, but possibly some sort of Frogfish or Batfish? I've seen a picture of one of those bottom dwelling type of fish with very "leg-like" back fins that made it look almost exactly like how i imagine the fully transformed form of Lovecraft's Deep Ones... speaking of which, that "Strange Fish" site (altho it doesn't contain anything exactly like the one i saw before) has some pretty scary and freaky looking beasties on it:

http://www.thejump.net/id/bigfrogfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/Polka-dot-Batfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/northern-seadevil.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/atlantic-footballfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/lumpfish.htm
http://www.thejump.net/id/wolffish.htm

(the second one of those is the closest one on there to the one i remember seeing...)
Click to expand...
ive actually caught a wolffish on holiday in norway, they catch them of the coast of scotland too,
 
Thanks for all the research. I knew I could count on the Fortean community to find the critter.

I've seen a lot of these weird wonders before and the squid with the imaginative name I ran across on a BBC site while doing my own research.

I suspect that the theory that it was used as an inaccurate illustration is probably right--I thought it odd that the two fish were said to be "green" while this fish is clearly more of a "purple" or "blue". Also, I know some of these South American news sources are much like tabloids in their unwillingness to research themselves out of a good story. The Weekly World News used to illustrate some of their "real" news stories with liberal doses of fantasy in pictoral form.

Now that we have determined what the two fish ain't, I wonder what they is?

Ah, Fort would never let us rest on our laurels.
 
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