Rainbow Trout Gets a Big Meal
Animals are no strangers to big meals, when situations come along that provide them with an ample supply. This rainbow was caught on the Kanektok River, in Alaska, during a rainbow trout project. It wound up being a mortality capture so it was cut open to see what it had been feeding on…
Surprise! The answer was shrews, and a whole lot of them. How did so many shrews make it into one trout? It’s anyone’s guess but perhaps a nest by the river eroded, dumping all of the shrews into the water where this rainbow likely came away feeling like a lottery winner.
Except for breeding season, shrews are solitary animals, so maybe a bigger mystery than one trout getting so many is what so many were doing in one spot. A nest perhaps? We’ll never know. Even then, litters normally max out at half the number here.
* This fish was a mortality capture during a rainbow trout radio tracking project. When it was determined the fish was going to die, biologists decided to see what it had been feeding on.