It all began in 2024, when scientists came across a video posted on the online platform TikTok, showing a tiny and unusual fish emerging from a well on the border between India and Nepal.
The fact that the animal had a singular appearance and that there were no records of subterranean fish in the region where it was filmed motivated a team of researchers from India and China to seek answers to the mystery.
To that end, they traveled to Bihar, a state in northern India, where the creature had been filmed, exploring several wells in the hope of finding it. The effort included not only asking the owners for permission to explore the wells in search of the enigmatic animal, but also a real physical effort to operate the water pumps, with which they hoped to surface what later proved to be an eel.
The work paid off, and the investigators eventually managed to net one more individual. With only four centimeters in length, the eel, named scientifically Gangaichthys indonepalicus (not only a new species but also a new genus), presents traits typical of animals that live in subterranean worlds: eyes reduced and covered with skin, a translucent, pigment-free body, and an apparent absence of ribs.
The animal also has a flattened tail in the shape of a fin, to move through the water.
Regarding the scientific name, the researchers say that the genus Gangaichthys means “fish of the Ganges,” since the new species was found in the basin of that great Asian river, the first subterranean fish to be discovered in that region. Regarding the specific epithet – indonepalicus – they explain it as a reference to the fact that it was found on the Indo-Nepal border.
Genetic analyses and computed tomography scans revealed that it is a new addition to the Chaudhuriidae family.
Now, multiple new avenues of investigation open to discover more about this new species and the cryptic world it inhabits, as well as about other life forms that may live underground, far from the sunny world to which we are accustomed on the surface.
