estled on the eastern ridge of the Colombian Andes, some 150 miles from Bogotá, sits Lake Tota, Colombia’s largest lake. Each week, hundreds of tourists flock to the lake’s shores to enjoy its serene waters, white sand beaches, high montane forests, and a cluster of restaurants specializing in rainbow trout. But beneath the placid stillness of the lake’s surface lurks an unsolved mystery: An unusual fish called the Fat Catfish, considered the lake’s only endemic fish species, has seemingly vanished.
The Fat Catfish ( ) has not yet been officially declared extinct—whether any members of the species still remain in the lake, no one can say for sure, but the fish has been lost to science for nearly 70 years. Now a cadre of scientists has become obsessed with closing the case. If they can confirm that the fish is no more, it would be the freshwater fish extinction recorded in all of South America.
Colombians call the Fat Catfish or “grease fish,” perhaps because locals reportedly used its fat for fuel in oil lamps at the beginning of the 20th century. That is to say, the Fat Catfish is, in fact, fat. According to reports, the fish is about 5.
5 inches in length, and its core is enveloped in six or seven rings of connective fat tissue, giving it the appearance of a Michelin Man with the head of a fish. Even before it vanished, the fish had reportedly only been sighted in Lake Tota, and nowhere else in the world. The fish burns like a candle when either of its fins i.
