French researcher Frederic Saintol received a phone call in 2011 from a fisherman working in the Tarn River in southern France, telling him information that some might not believe, as he noticed that the fish had learned to catch pigeons.
Santoul is an assistant professor of biology and ecology at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, where he hired some fishermen to collect all the information to use to study the environmental impact of large catfish species.
The fishermen spotted a strange phenomenon, where pigeons stand in the morning on the banks of the river in the Albi regions, which is home to many wild pigeons that enjoy the shallow water with the gravel spread on the banks of the Tarn River.
The catfish took advantage of the moments of enjoyment in the bathroom, where the fish waited for the sunrise and took advantage of the reflection of light on the surface of the water to hide, with the aim of snatching a morning meal from the bathroom, which sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails.
After receiving the call, Santol spent an entire summer season in the Albi region with the aim of filming this phenomenon, where he recorded many amazing scenes of catfish catching some pigeons from outside the water or from the banks of the river, according to the “fieldandstream” website.
The researcher noticed that the catfish follow an infiltrating strategy, where they get close to the birds as much as possible, taking advantage of the reflection of sunlight on the surface of the water, and when they approach, they swallow the pigeons with their large mouths, and sometimes push their bodies away from the water between the pebbles to catch the birds.