What are Arapaima Gigas?
Arapaima Gigas Skin
These are extremely large fish from the Amazon river, they are becoming very endangered now, due to over culling for use on cowboy boots in place of Pangolins. Pangolins have become extremely scarce now due to being killed for meat, scales and the skins for fashion goods and footwear.
Arapaima Gigas have an incredibly unique pattern to them like a diamond pattern and this looks stunning once a skin is tanned and this is an immensely popular form of leather for cowboy boots in the USA.
Arapaima Gigas
Due to the amounts they have been farmed they have become very rare and on the endangered list of fish, along with the Panglolins which a scaly any eater type animal.
Both of these have a unique skin pattern like diamonds once tanned.
Arapaima Gigas are also known as Piraruca, they are a unique fish in that it’s an air breather, so must come to the surface on a regular basis to breathe and gulp air to survive under water. They are believed to be one of the largest fresh water fish around, some reaching 3 metres long and weighing in at 200kg that’s some river monster and has an amazing bite. The largest fresh water fish in the world is the beluga sturgeon which can grow to 7.2 metres in length and can weigh in at 1,570kg, now that’s a monster!!
The Beluga Sturgeon can produce some of the most expensive caviar in the world, for this reason they have become a very valuable fish and fish farms for them are increasing.