Climbing Perch

Fascinating facts about the Climbing Perch

• A fish that can stretch up to 25 cm (9.8 in) long still manages to breathe air like a tiny scuba diver, thanks to a labyrinth organ that forces it to the water’s surface for oxygen.
• When water dries up, this amphibious swimmer can tuck itself into mud and survive for several days or even weeks out of water, provided its breathing organ stays moist.
• It can trek across land for 6–10 hours, wriggling its body and using its pectoral fins like makeshift legs, a trick that helps it hitch rides on fishing boats and colonize new islands.
• Museum specimens dated back to 1901 show the species was present in the Philippines long before anyone called it “introduced,” suggesting its native range may be far broader than textbooks admit.
• In late 2005, a handful of individuals were found just three to four miles south of Papua New Guinea on Saibai Island, hinting that the fish is edging toward northern Australia and could rewrite the map of invasive freshwater species.

At a glance

About the Climbing Perch

The climbing perch (Anabas testudineus) is a sleek, euryhaline fish that can reach 25 cm (9.8 in) in total length. Its body shimmers from dark to pale green, with an olive dorsal surface, a paler belly, and distinctive longitudinal stripes on the lower cheeks. A dark spot sits just behind the gill cover, and a second spot may appear at the base of the tail fin, while juveniles display striking vertical bars along their sides. Like its fellow labyrinth fishes, it carries a specialized air-breathing organ that obliges it to surface for oxygen, allowing it to survive in stagnant, low-oxygen waters that would kill most other species. When the dry season dries up its habitat, the perch buries itself in mud, remaining dormant until the rains return, and it can even endure several days, or weeks, out of water so long as its labyrinthine organs stay moist, a feat that earned it the moniker “climbing perch.” Native to a vast swath of Far Eastern Asia, from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the west, across Nepal, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and southern China (including Hong Kong) to the islands west of the Wallace Line, this amphibious wanderer is equally at home in rivers, ponds, and rice paddies. Its ability to crawl on land for 6–10 hours, wriggling with its pectoral fins, enables it to hop between water bodies, often hitching rides on fishing boats. This remarkable terrestrial locomotion has turned the species into an invasive threat in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and even the Torres Strait, where it was first recorded on Saibai Island in late 2005, just three to four miles south of Papua New Guinea. Its resilience, air-breathing habit, and surprising capacity to survive out of water make the climbing perch a true survivor of changing waters,

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