Giant snakehead

Species card

Name and family

Scientific name Channa micropeltes

In English it is called giant snakehead or red snakehead. It belongs to the snakeheads (family Channidae), fish with a long body, a flat head and a single long dorsal fin.

What makes it special

An air-breathing ambush predator. It gulps air at the surface, so it can live in warm, low-oxygen water. Both parents guard the fry, and the young are bright orange-red.

Snakeheads can breathe air through a special organ above the gills. That is why you often see them roll at the surface, and why they survive in ponds and ditches where other predators cannot. A big adult can grow well beyond one metre.

Where it lives

Slow rivers, swamps, reservoirs and ponds in Southeast Asia, including the Mekong basin.

What it eats

Mostly fish, but also frogs and crustaceans.

Before you fish

In several countries the species is regulated or banned from import and possession because it can harm local wildlife if it escapes. Never move or release a snakehead somewhere new: catch and release means putting it back, alive, where you caught it. Check the local rules before you fish.

Fishing rules change by country, state and season. Check them before you fish.

On the channel

Francesco fishes snakehead in Vietnam. Which exact snakehead species each fish was is still to be confirmed for every video, so the episode pages say "snakehead" until it is.