Freshwater sharks: 30 years ago you could scoop up more than you could eat, yet they drive Americans crazy
No matter which species' world you look at, there will always be a few particularly bizarre species. Among fish, for example, there is one that looks unremarkable, is not especially large, has no claws or fangs, cannot discharge electricity or release venom, yet wherever this fish goes, it can eat every fish in the water. You heard that right, every fish in the whole lake. Its appetite is astonishingly large and its nature is ferocious. It is the "snakehead", long known among fish for its terrifying reputation as the "freshwater shark".
It also has a special skill: it can wriggle its body and slide along the ground, in order to find new rivers, since it eats so much that one lake cannot support it for long. It is also "amphibious", able to survive three days out of water, with an incredible vitality. The snakehead is a very common fish in our country. It is large in size and grows fast, gaining 15 cm in length each year, with an average weight of about 2 kg. As an aquaculture species of great economic value, many farmers in our country make snakehead farming their main occupation.
The snakehead's body has snake-like mottled markings, unique among fish and easy to identify. Around 30 years ago, when fish farming was not yet developed and most fish on the market were wild, the most common fish in rural rivers was the snakehead. Every autumn and winter during the dry season, you could scoop up plenty just by fishing casually in the river. As a child I ate a lot of snakehead roe. As mentioned earlier, the snakehead eats any fish; it is an extremely ferocious predatory fish, so its flesh is delicious and nutritious. In the past, rural women who had just given birth would eat snakehead and drink snakehead soup to promote milk production.
The snakehead is distributed across all the major river systems of our country, and also in Japan and Korea. Americans have introduced it too, and after it took root in the United States it once became an American nightmare. There are two main reasons. First, its appetite is too big, so once it enters a fish pond, basically all the fry become its meal, and it breeds quickly, making it very hard to drive out. Second, the snakehead eats everything, including its own kind, and is even called the dirtiest fish in the world. Americans are used to eating sea fish and will not eat this kind of freshwater fish. To get rid of the snakehead, Americans have racked their brains, even mobilising the public to kill every snakehead they see, yet they still cannot change the fact that the snakehead is running rampant.
In the eyes of Americans, the snakehead is not just a "freshwater shark" but a monster-like existence. Legend has it that it not only eats other fish but also pets, and even humans (of course, this is certainly false). Americans even made a movie in which the monster is a snakehead, which deepened their aversion to it. In truth, how could the snakehead be so terrifying? In our country it is an absolute delicacy, selling for 20 yuan per kilogram. If Americans came and tried our braised snakehead or boiled snakehead, they might well eat the snakehead into extinction!