site

  1. myWWF Sign in
  2. Sign up
  3. Help
  1. Home
  2. Who We Are
  3. What We Do
  4. About Our Earth
  5. How You Can Help
  6. News
  7. Climate
  1. Home
    1. What We Do
      1. Priority Species

Paddlefish

Paddlefish (<i>Polyodon spathula</i>)

Key facts

  • Common Name

    Paddlefish

  • Family Name

    Polyodontidae

  • Endangered?

    Vulnerable to critically endangered

  • Length

    1.5m

  • Weight

    Average weight is 27kg

  • Location

    North America and China

  • Did you know?

    The paddlefish's bill or rostrum can detect weak electical fields, helping them find zooplankton to eat.

Exploited and dammed

Over-harvesting and river modifications have had negative impacts on both species of paddlefish, causing significant drops in population numbers.

The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) is now listed as critically endangered by IUCN, whilst the American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) is listed as vulnerable.

Paddlefish are also known as duckbill cat, spadefish and spoonbill cat.

More information

Threats

Both American paddlefish and Chinese paddlefish have been affected by overharvesting. As with sturgeon, the eggs are collected and made into the luxury foodstuff caviar.

Paddlefish have also suffered as a result of interference with their natural habitat, in particular damming of rivers, sedimentation, pollution and poisoning of rivers and competition from introduced species.

Photos and graphics © WWF or used with permission. Text available under a Creative Commons licence. RSS/Web Feeds

@import url('http://s3.amazonaws.com/getsatisfaction.com/feedback/feedback.css');