Oral Gestation in the Gaff-Topsail Catfish, Felichthys Felis. 39 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 



From the peculiar dental armature of the gaff-topsail (the teeth 

 being confined to villiform bands on the vomer and palatines and to 

 supra-pharyngeal and infra-pharyngeal pads, and hence adapted for 

 crushing rather than biting, tearing, or holding), one would conjecture 

 that it is not a feeder on fishes, a predatory fish in the common 

 acceptance of the term, but rather a bottom feeder. This finds con- 

 firmation in the fact that it prefers a muddy or sandy bottom in muddy 

 water where it finds its food by the help of its tactile organs, the bar- 

 bels. Moreover, dissections of scores of both males and females make 

 it clear that the gaff-topsail feeds almost exclusively on Crustacea. 

 Autopsy reveals an occasional fish (menhaden or croaker), but its 

 principal food is crab, blue crab, eked out with an occasional shrimp. 

 From the much-distended stomachs of sundry specimens, crabs 4 

 to 5 inches wide have been excised, so large that one wonders how they 

 could have been swallowed. Ocular examination of the contents 

 of the intestines has shown large fragments of the chitinous cover- 

 ings of Crustacea with here and there a claw. On the whole, these 

 contents present a felt-like appearance which persists under an ordi- 

 nary eye-glass. The microscope, however, resolves this material 

 into minute fragments of chitinous shell, grains of sand, bits of dirt 

 so small that they give the Brownian movement, and immense num- 

 bers of crustacean hair-like setse. There can be no doubt that crus- 

 tacea large and small form the major portion perhaps as much as 

 nine-tenths of the food of the gaff-topsail catfish. 



The foregoing observations have been made on females and non- 

 breeding males. Such have always been found in fine full-fed condi- 

 tion, the intestinal tract being plump, well-nourished, fat, distended. 

 Breeding females do not have the distended stomachs of the non- 

 breeding ones, the size of their colossal ovaries forbidding this, but 

 all have been found in good condition. 



Breeding males, whether carrying eggs or not, may always be 

 recognized at a glance by their depressed hyoid regions, their " double- 

 chins." For those without eggs it may be conjectured that they have 

 through fright or some mishap given up their eggs, or that they have 

 not yet received them but are prepared therefor in similar fashion 

 as the uterus of the stingray (Dasyatis say) becomes villous to receive 

 the egg even before the latter descends into the oviduct. Such 

 breeding males always have empty, pendulous stomachs and stringy 

 intestines without trace of food in them. This has been found the 

 case in more than a hundred autopsies. From these facts the con- 

 clusion is drawn that the o vigorous males of Felichthys felis do not 

 feed at all during the time of gestation. Certain it is that no body 

 of any size can pass down the oesophagus without the eggs following. 



