📸 PhotoPhoto: Mattia Nocciola · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons Source
West African lungfish
Protopterus annectens (West African lungfish · West African lungfish)
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 💡 Its maximum length of 100 cm is equal to the length of a 1 m student ruler (Comparison).
- 💡 Its maximum weight of 4 kg is one-fifth (1/5) the weight of a 20 kg bag of rice (Comparison).
- 💡 According to FishBase, small-scale fisheries harvest it for food and its aquaculture is also commercially important.
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
Site-computed relative index from recorded values; not a formal scientific metric.
📖 1. Overview
The West African lungfish is a freshwater lungfish of Africa that cannot survive on gills alone and must breathe air. It lives in swamps, river margins, and floodplains.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
The body is elongated with a round cross-section. It has 34–37 pairs of trunk ribs, and one subspecies has thread-like elongated paired fins.
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
It eats mollusks, frogs, fish, and seeds, and in Kenya it feeds heavily on plant matter such as roots. During the dry season when floodplains dry up, it forms a mucus cocoon and aestivates in the mud.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
No direct record connecting this species to Korea has been found.
📚 Sources & References
- • IUCN Red List LC (2020) — https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/169408/135027770
- • IUCN Red List category LC — latest assessment at iucnredlist.org
- • catalogueoflife.org — 4N6R6
- • iucnredlist.org — 135027770
- • wikidata.org — Q512042
- • commons.wikimedia.org — File:Protopterus annectens Natural History Museum University
- • fishbase.se — Protopterus-annectens.html
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — author not recorded · CC0 1.0
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.