Ompax spatuloides

Ompax spatuloides was a hoax fish "discovered" in Australia in August, 1872.[1] Said to be poisonous, it could be found on some lists of Australian fishes through the 1930s.

The fish was a joke perpetrated by people at Gayndah station, Queensland, who prepared it from the body of a mullet, the tail of an eel and the head of a platypus or needlefish. They served it cooked for Karl Theodor Staiger, the director of the Brisbane Museum, and he forwarded a sketch and description of the fake to expert Francis de Laporte de Castelnau, who described the supposed "species" in 1879.[2] The first publication was in the proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales,[3] in which Count Castelnau gave his description with figures reproducing the sketches executed at the time by "a draughtsman" at Staiger's request.[4] Doubts about the existence of the species were expressed as soon as 1881, when William John Macleay included it in a faunal list, but the name continued to appear throughout the twentieth century.[3][5]

Staiger is quoted as saying the fish was brought to him by indigenous people who had obtained it around ten miles away.[4] The components of the specimen were said by an anonymous confessor writing to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1930 to have been sourced from the tail of an eel, a mullet's body, and the head of an Australian lungfish. The last animal, the Australian lungfish, was an extraordinary fish whose existence had only become known to European researchers just a few years before. The addition of a platypus bill, seemingly shown in profile in Castelnau's accompanying figure, is also reported in the letter revealing the hoax.[6] In selecting the name of the genus, Castelnau says "In our present knowledge of this singular fish, some inconvenience might arise from giving it a significant name; and I think it is preferable to design it under the mysterious historical one of Ompax."[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Finney (2023), p.77.
  2. ^ "A Mythical Fish". The Advocate. Burnie, Tas.: National Library of Australia. 17 January 1934. p. 5. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  3. ^ a b Macleay (1881).
  4. ^ a b c Castelnau (1879), pp.164–165.
  5. ^ Saunders (2012), p.126.
  6. ^ Helfman, G.; Collette, B.B.; Facey, D.E.; Bowen, B.W. (2009), p.294.

References

  • Australian Sporting Records (1998): 117. Bantam Books.
  • Whitley, Gilbert P. (1933): Ompax spatuloides Castelnau, a mythical Australian fish. Am. Nat. 67(713): 563–567. [1]
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