the.com/loach
a fish that breathes through its butt and predicts thunderstorms before your weather app
means A small bottom-dwelling freshwater fish with whisker-like barbels around its mouth, found across Europe and Asia.
from From Old French 'loche,' the name for these little mud-haunting fish, which English borrowed in the late Middle Ages. The deeper root of the French word is murky — fittingly, for a fish that lives in the silt — and may go back to a regional or pre-Latin source that simply named the creature without leaving us its story.
- gut breather
- Gulps air, absorbs oxygen through its intestine
- weather prophet
- Grows restless before storms, hence weatherfish
- mud diver
- Burrows into sediment to wait out drought
- barbel sensors
- Whisker-like feelers taste the dark riverbed
- global spread
- Hundreds of species across Eurasia and Africa
clown loach — tropical freshwater fish from southeast asia, popular in aquariums for its orange and black stripes
stone loach — european freshwater fish found in rocky streams from britain to russia
yoyo loach — south asian aquarium fish with y-shaped pattern markings on its body