Something about rotan...

*Hello, All!* Amur sleeper - Percuttus glehni This is a freshwater fish that resembles a goby in shape. Appeared in bodies of water forest-steppe zone in the 80s and since then has been increasing its expansion to all reservoirs, including protected ones. Rotan prefers stagnant ponds and swamps, rivers with muddy days. Reaches a length of 24 cm, but its usual sizes are up to 8, less often up to 14 cm. Extremely unpretentious and can live and reproduce in very polluted water bodies under unfavorable external conditions. Rotan matures at the age of more than two years, reaching a body length of about 6 cm. The spawning period extends from May to July, at a water temperature of 15-20°. The female's fertility is 1 thousand eggs. The eggs are sticky and deposited on the bottom. The small, dark-colored fish aroused everyone’s curiosity: it pecked at what got it - on a worm, on meat, on a shell, on a tadpole, on bread, grass roots, grabbed relatives - small rotans. The bite is always confident and decisive. And the fish is edible, even tasty, according to many - suitable for frying pan and fish soup. It was discovered: everywhere this alien from the Amur, black as a firebrand, appeared - all kinds of fish began to rapidly decrease. But because in unkempt only crucian carp can still live in muddy reservoirs, then it was the crucian carp that disappeared - rotan devoured their eggs and fry. It already looked like a disaster.The BLACK strange fish aroused understandable curiosity everywhere. But there was little it is known about her. Everywhere they were amazed at her omnivorousness and gluttony. Noticed: in the spring, during spawning, males are very different in color from the grayish females (black as a shoe soaked in wax). Some places report: rotans reach weights of up to eight hundred grams - even now they do not disdain such avid fishermen. And the general amazement is caused by the fantastic survivability new fish. As proof, I offer the story of a fisherman: “Last winter I pinched this pond of ice into the cellar. This was in February. And in August it's time to clean up potatoes, and I went into the cellar to scoop out the water and rake out the remaining ice. So what you think - I found rotans in the bucket! They swim as if nothing had happened. They were frozen into ice, sat in the dark for six months without food - and are alive! old man pulled out another rotan from the pond, and we looked at it with curiosity a familiar fish. At the same time, I recalled the experiment of inquisitive fishermen, who wrote to me about rotan: “We lived in a wet rag in the refrigerator for a week. They let me in bath - float. If you lower a hook with bait on the line, they bite.” The famous Khabarovsk naturalist Sergei Petrovich Kucherenko says: On the Amur rotans live not in the river, but in oxbow lakes, barrels, potholes and overgrown lakes Sergei Petrovich has respect for this fish, associated with his childhood inyears of war: “Rotan is the only way we survived. In one dawn I pulled two hundred unsightly, but fatty and tasty fish." Naturally curious future The naturalist understood from childhood: rotan is an unusual fish. Having occupied an ecological niche, not acceptable for many fish, rotan over a long evolution has adapted to survive in very difficult conditions. Shallow, silty, oxygen-poor bodies of water, in winter almost always freeze to the bottom. And rotans freeze into ice without bad consequences, They spend the winter in it and come to life in the spring. This phenomenon is known to many. I myself am with looked in amazement at the frozen perches rattling in the fishing box - thrown into a bath of water, they came to life. Gradually I realized: "resurrection" occurred only if the frost was only a “crust” on top: it immobilized fish without affecting its cavity fluids. Stronger frost on fish acted in such a way that she could not come to life in the bath. It is curious that rotans themselves freeze themselves into ice. Clustering into tight shoals, they stay under the bottom surface of the ice, moving to prevent the water from freezing around the school. Ice below eventually forms, but rotans end up in a cavity with water, where the temperature is somewhere near zero. This is also an uncomfortable environment, but by autumn, in salts accumulate in the cavity fluids of fish, and they become something like natural "antifreeze" - internal freezing does not occur, and, therefore,Ice crystals do not destroy fabrics. Sometimes rotans overwinter differently - like crucian carp, they burrow into the silt and so, half asleep, motionless, spend several months. But even in the summer, trouble can overtake rotans. Overgrown shallow ponds are drying up. They dry out so much that you can walk on the crust of silt. Are rotans dying? Not at all it happened! At this time they become covered with mucus and hibernate in a dense capsule. like hedgehogs and frogs. "As children, armed with shovels, we raked out the mud black heads. It was interesting to revive them. Wrapping the prey in wet burlap, we ran to the water. Rotans woke up in her and immediately showed their characteristic appetite,” writes Sergei Petrovich. The Eye of Science paid attention to rotan only a little over a hundred years ago. And much more Sergei Petrovich learned about the habits of fish as a village boy, “observing fish from a high bank, from a haystack, from a tree above the water." "Amur sleeper does not live in running waters. Its element is shallow thickets. In them Rotan feels confident. Not disdaining anything, he sometimes gorges himself so much that the belly becomes the main feature in his appearance, - on the big-mouthed head in the second turn you pay attention. Swallowed to the fullest, like everything that exists, Rotan is not averse to taking a nap. With its front fins it hugs some a reed in the water and sometimes freezes on it in a very awkward position, say, with his head down.It is interesting to watch rotans hunting. You expect them to be clumsy, rude movements, and they are careful and careful. A rotan approaches some small fish no worse than a leopard to an antelope: it cuts corners, sometimes it moves barely, like oars, moving its fins. And only at the right distance it instantly opens hello. Once! - and the fry is no longer there. A rare case in fish - in rotan at the same time There are regular and throat teeth. No one can escape from this armed jaws given." Rotan is a big fan of foreign caviar. He himself spawns large eggs, placing them "piece by piece" in a secret place. The fertilized treasure rotan-papa remains guard and at this time can be attentive and aggressive. It is not possible to distract him from his post even succeeds in temptingly delicious food. This does not prevent, however, from eating rotan their young when they begin to scurry briskly in the water - an example of regulation number of animals, known not only from the example of rotan, - cannibals pikes and bears appear; wolves will tear apart a weakened brother. But the main curb that prevents rotans from multiplying immeasurably is constant The "shepherd" of rotans is a greedy snakehead. THERE IS such a concept “predator - prey” - a biological law formulated and human wisdom: that’s why there’s a pike in the river, so that the crucian carp doesn’t sleep. For rotan like this The “pike” is always a snakehead predator, reaching a meter in length and tenkilograms of weight. This hunter will, of course, “pinch” anyone he meets on path, but its main victim is rotan. Naturally, the snakehead must share all the inconveniences of the environment in which rotans live. True, there are no snakeheads in the ice freezes, but buries itself in silt and still has the rare ability to absorb oxygen from the air. Sergei Petrovich writes that he has seen snakeheads more than once stick out of the water - to breathe. "It's especially interesting to see this predator, when he, concerned about preserving caviar in stale water, collects from the surface air and releases it in a bubble in the right place." The snakehead's ability to use atmospheric air makes it similar to Atlantic eel (in the Far East this fish is called eel). On wet In the grass at night, a snakehead can crawl in search of a suitable body of water. On this way You can, of course, perish, but he chooses the course to the water unerringly. "One day in the evening during haymaking time,” writes Sergei Petrovich, “I threw it under the table in a couple of snakeheads in the meadow camp and ran to his father. I returned a short time later - the fish had disappeared! Out of curiosity I began to do circles in the grass and found the fugitives twenty meters away on the direct path to the lake." There was no such rotan hunter in the new places, and that’s why “without controller" they multiplied and spread so quickly. True, they write, the numberthere have been fewer of them lately. This is also a pattern. In the early years the number of displaced people is growing staggeringly, but the “fire” is gradually subsiding - population control mechanisms are activated, known to us and not yet famous. But the fact that rotan has settled in our area forever must be considered a fait accompli. The article uses material published by V. Peskov in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda dated 08/18/2000 /That’s all, All, you can scroll further.../