Toothed eels fell from sky over Alaskan city
Imagine waking up one morning to find your garden littered with fish.
Residents in Fairbanks, Alaska (USA) found just that! The toothed Arctic lamprey eels were discovered in a shopping centre car park and on people’s lawns in the Alaskan town of Fairfax. According to the town’s newspaper, the adult fish fell from the sky not once, but four times!
This as-yet unexplained phenomenon has already given rise to tongue-in-cheek claims of “vampire fish” and “fish monsters” raining down, in part due to the common belief that the lampreys can bore into the flesh of other fish to suck their blood. (Actually only 18 out of 38 species of lampreys are parasitic.)
Given that the fish are too difficult to catch and not sold commercially in the area, it was reported that,
“That’s unusual for a fish that’s seldom seen in the water up here.”
There have long been documented cases of small animals such as worms, fish or frogs falling from the sky. Waterspouts or tornadoes crossing over a lake or river can pick up debris, including light aquatic animals, and carry them for miles before they rain down.
However, there had been no reported tornadoes or waterspouts in the Fairbanks area.
Some believed it was a practical joke.
But the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game offered the most plausible explanation – the fish were dropped from the air by seagulls.
Seagulls are often seen feeding on lampreys and small fish, but they do not always eat their prey on the spot. Sometimes they fly away with their prey in their beaks, and will accidentally drop their catch before they can eat it.
In these cases, a lamprey may be found some distance from the water and appear to have inexplicably fallen from the sky.
Lampreys are jawless fish, characterised by a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. They come from a very ancient line of vertebrates and can range from 13 to 100 cm in length.
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons and Pixabay under Creative Commons licence)
