Catfish: the (gentle?) giant seen increasingly in Swiss waters

The catfish is renowned for swallowing up everything it comes across – should humans be worried? Swiss public television, RTS, dived into the Rhône to find out. With its big head, huge mouth, and 1,500 teeth, the catfish naturally inspires a certain trepidation. Its body – flaccid and without scales – looks almost as much snake as fish. But bathers shouldn’t fret: catfish don’t attack humans, or at least hardly ever… “Suddenly I felt a large pressure around my stomach which was very, very painful. I said to myself: head for safety, get back to shore,” says Alexandra, who fell victim to a catfish-biting incident in Sion, southern Switzerland, in 2011. Back on dry land, Alexandra realised things weren’t as bad as feared. “It managed to get off with a bit of my bikini,” she says. “But I wasn’t really bleeding, it was mainly just chafing and painful.” Protect the nest Other – very rare – incidents which have been reported elsewhere in Europe all have one thing in common: they happened ...