Pike Gudgeon
Amazing fact
The pike gudgeon sucks up aquatic insects with sand, then spits out the sand to eat the insects.
岡山市環境学習センターめだかの学校
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The pike gudgeon sucks up aquatic insects with sand, then spits out the sand to eat the insects.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Pike Gudgeon
- Scientific name
- Pseudogobio esocinus
- Japanese name
- カマツカ
- Group
- Freshwater animals
- Order
- Cypriniformes
- Family
- Cyprinidae
- Genus
- Pseudogobio
A member of the carp family that lives in rivers of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, and of the Korean Peninsula and northern China.
It lives in the middle reaches of rivers and has a habit of burying itself in the sand and gravel of the riverbed.
How the Pike Gudgeon lives
It swims as if crawling, with its belly against the riverbed. Its dark markings blend into riverbed sand, hiding it from enemies. During the spawning season, males develop small white bumps around the mouth and eyes. Eggs laid in the sand drift downstream and attach to pebbles, algae and other surfaces.
岡山市環境学習センターめだかの学校Basic data
- Range
- Iwate Prefecture, Honshu south of Yamagata Prefecture, Shikoku, Kyushu, Korean Peninsula, and northern China
Where the Pike Gudgeon has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- カマツカ
- 简体中文
- 镰柄
- 繁體中文
- 鎌柄
- 한국어
- 모래무지
- Русский
- Щуковидный лжепескарь
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — カマツカChecked: 2026-11-04
- 岡山市環境学習センターめだかの学校 — カマツカChecked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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