Is the Asian swamp eel a fish? A detailed explanation of the biological classification of the Asian swamp eel

The Asian swamp eel is a fish. It is a tropical and warm-temperate fish, living in the bottom layer of water bodies, mainly inhabiting muddy waters such as rice paddies, lakes, ponds, rivers and ditches. It likes to burrow into caves and dwell there, is rarely active during the day, and comes out of its burrow at night to forage. It is a fierce carnivorous fish that can prey on various small animals, such as insects and their larvae, and can also swallow frogs, tadpoles and small fish.

The Asian swamp eel is widely distributed in eastern Asia and nearby islands of various sizes, from Southeast Asia in the west to the Philippine Islands in the east, and from Japan in the north to the East Indies in the south. It often lives in the muddy bottom layer of rice paddies, small rivers, small streams, ponds, canals, lakes and other waters, and is produced throughout China, with greater output in China's Yangtze River basin, Liaoning and Tianjin.

Asian swamp eel meat is tender and fresh-tasting, with very high nutritional value; it is a fine dish at banquets, and its meat, blood, head and skin all have certain medicinal value. According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, the Asian swamp eel has effects such as enriching the blood, supplementing qi, reducing inflammation, disinfecting, and eliminating rheumatism. Asian swamp eel meat can treat consumptive cough, damp-heat bodily itching, intestinal wind and hemorrhoids, deafness and other conditions. Asian swamp eel blood dripped into the ear can treat chronic suppurative otitis media, and dripped into the nose can treat epistaxis (nosebleeds); used externally, it can treat facial paralysis and facial nerve palsy. Asian swamp eel head, calcined into ash and taken on an empty stomach with warm wine, can treat hard and painful breast lumps in women.