Snakehead fish is a fierce carnivorous species. It can kill or eat all the other kinds of fishes in the same water area. It’s been widely known as invasive species in America. Even a movie was made based on the species invasion, called FRANKENFISH. They are better at surviving and reproducing than the other species in freshwater. It uses a suprabranchial organ and a bifurcated ventral aorta that permits aquatic and aerial respiration. This unusual respiratory system allows it to live outside of water for several days. It can wriggle its way to other bodies of water or survive being transported by humans. The northern snakehead can double its population in as few as 15 months. It reaches sexual maturity at age two or three, when it will be about 30 to 35 cm (1 ft 0 in–1 ft 2 in) long.
But in China, Snakehead fish is famous for its taste and nutrition value. The content of a series of amino acid, called flavor amino acid, is relatively high in snakehead fish flesh, which makes it taste delicious. Moreover, the snakehead fish is also considered to be of great medicinal value in traditional Chinese medicine theory. These advantages promoted the prevalence of the fish and a large increase in its production, which also enlarged the consumption of wild fishery resources because snakehead fish is a carnivorous species and it’s not easy to domesticate them to eat artificially formulated feeds until recently due to the development of feed technology. Even so, the domestication of snakehead fish is still not an easy task.
