The living habits of Monopterus Albus

Monopterus Albus is a tropical and warm temperate fish, a benthic fish with strong adaptability and can survive in rivers, lakes, ditches and rice fields. During the day, they like to drill holes in humus mud or live in holes in rocks with water on the embankment. They seldom move during the day and come out to look for food at night. The Gill is underdeveloped, and with the help of the inner epidermis of the oral cavity and laryngeal cavity as an auxiliary organ for breathing, it can breathe air directly; it can also survive when the oxygen content in water is very poor. After getting out of the water, as long as you keep your skin moist, you won't die for a few days. Monopterus Albus is an omnivorous fish that feeds on all kinds of small animals. it is sexually greedy and eats most vigorously in summer. it can not eat for a long time in the cold season without dying. Monopterus Albus is generally active in spring, summer and autumn. Like to live in ponds, rivers, rice fields ridge mud holes and stone cracks. Hibernating in a cave in winter. Spring, Monopterus Albus after a winter of incubation, physical exertion is too large, need to eat a lot, so spring is a good time to catch Monopterus Albus. In summer, when the climate is hot, ricefield eels come out one after another to drill holes in water plants, cracks in stones, and under dead trees to "enjoy the cool". It is also easy to fish. In autumn, ricefield eel begins to enter the hole and is not easy to take the bait.

The reproductive season of Monopterus Albus is saved from May to August. In its ontogeny, Monopterus Albus is female from the embryonic stage to the first sexual maturity (that is, the gonads of the individuals less than 35 cm in length are all ovaries). After spawning, the ovaries gradually turn into testes; when the body length is 36 cm to 48 cm, the partial sex is reversed, and the male and female individuals are almost equal, belonging to hermaphrodites; those who grow to more than 53 cm are mostly testes. In that year, the young fish can only grow to 20 centimeters, and the 2-winter-old females reach maturity, with a body length of at least 34 centimeters. The largest individual can reach 70 centimeters and weigh 1.5 kilograms. In May 2013, a rice field eel weighing 3.6 jin and 1.5 meters long was caught in Huzhou. Monopterus Albus lays eggs near the mouth of its cave, and foams are piled into nests before spawning. Fertilized eggs develop on the water surface with the help of foam buoyancy. Both males and females have the habit of protecting nests.

The eel's body is cylindrical, suitable for living in caves, and is very beneficial to entering and leaving caves and reducing friction. It is really a bit of a "hermit" bearing, has no special attack ability, nor does it have a powerful defensive weapon, and its only skill is "36 tricks, escape for supremacy." It has neither pectoral fin nor ventral fin, and even the dorsal and anal fins have been reduced to only a little skinfold, and the scales have disappeared so that they are invisible to the naked eye, but the whole body can secrete very slippery mucus, and it can slip out of your hands if you are not careful. The main function of the mucus on the eel is to prevent bacteria and germs from infecting the body and reduce diseases; to prevent the entanglement of parasitic animals and plants, which is conducive to growth; and the smooth surface of the oil head is conducive to its unhindered passage in the mud.

The eel is female when the embryo develops to the first sexual maturity, but it becomes male again from the second sexual maturity. That is to say, Monopterus Albus is both a mother and a father in her life. This process of transformation of yin and yang is biologically called sexual reversal. Fish often breathe through gills, but eels are unique. Their gills degenerate and rely on the tiny blood vessels on the surface of the throat to absorb air directly. So if we want to keep the eel alive, we must keep it moist and store it in a cool place.

When the pregnant ricefield eel is faced with death threats, such as being cooked, it will instinctively lift up its stomach and make the last effort to protect its own child.