Animal field guide
Red-tailed Black Shark
Epalzeorhynchos bicolor
A small river fish of the carp family from central Thailand, unrelated to true sharks. In aquaria it grazes rock and wood with an underslung, rasping mouth. Fish farms breed it by the thousand, yet it was listed as extinct in the wild until 2011, when a surviving population in the Chao Phraya basin was recognised and the species was re-listed as Critically Endangered.
Red-tailed Black Shark at a glance
Fish · Southeast Asia · Lowland rivers and streams of the · Downturned mouth with two pairs of · Relatively common
Known for: Velvet-black body and fins, Deeply forked tail, Tall, Downturned mouth with two pairs of short barbels
Its Power
Territorial Balance
Establish clear boundaries and respect others' space.
Red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony.
“Respect Space.”
Capture a Red-tailed Black Shark, and it's yours when you finish one step it gives you.
Biological basis
In the wild, Red-tailed Black Sharks establish and defend territories to minimize competition and promote peaceful coexistence.
Put it into practice
Three flatmates give each person a fridge shelf and a cupboard, and the arguments over food stop.
What does the red-tailed black shark symbolize?
The red-tailed black shark symbolizes territorial balance: establish clear boundaries and respect others' space. It represents boundaries, healthy territory and holding ground. Its AnimalDex motto: "Respect Space."
The red-tailed black shark as a spirit animal
If the red-tailed black shark is your spirit animal, the AnimalDex reading is Territorial Balance: red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony. It suggests a strength in boundaries and healthy territory, and a reminder to use it on purpose.
What can the red-tailed black shark help you with in life?
The red-tailed black shark is a guide for boundaries, healthy territory and holding ground. Its lesson applies wherever boundaries matters: red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony.
- Boundaries
- Healthy Territory
- Holding Ground
In practice: Three flatmates give each person a fridge shelf and a cupboard, and the arguments over food stop.
What can we learn from the Red-tailed Black Shark?What does it mean to dream about or encounter a wild red-tailed black shark?
Dreaming about a wild red-tailed black shark, or coming across one, usually points to boundaries and healthy territory: the qualities the red-tailed black shark lives by. In AnimalDex, the red-tailed black shark's principle is Territorial Balance: establish clear boundaries and respect others' space. Read the moment through its core lesson: Red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony.
Neither good nor bad on its own. How the red-tailed black shark acts matters: at ease, it reflects boundaries; hostile, it flags boundaries out of balance.
Spotting a red-tailed black shark in the wild
Coming across a red-tailed black shark in person asks for attention more than interpretation. Watch it for a minute; the red-tailed black shark's way of working is Territorial Balance, and the lesson is: red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony.
A red-tailed black shark that keeps appearing
Seeing the red-tailed black shark again and again, in dreams or outside, suggests boundaries is a theme you have not settled yet.
Dreaming of being chased by a red-tailed black shark
A chase often means a demand for boundaries is catching up with you. The red-tailed black shark's lesson, "Red-tailed Black Sharks are known for their territorial nature, maintaining distinct areas within their habitat to reduce conflict and ensure harmony", is the part you may be running from.
Dreaming that a red-tailed black shark attacks you
An aggressive red-tailed black shark can mirror a conflict where boundaries has become a weapon rather than a strength.
A calm or friendly red-tailed black shark
A calm red-tailed black shark suggests you have made peace with boundaries and can use it without force.
A dead or injured red-tailed black shark
A dead or injured red-tailed black shark, dreamed or found, can mark boundaries you have let lapse, or a phase built on Territorial Balance coming to an end.
These readings are reflective prompts drawn from how the red-tailed black shark really lives, not predictions. If you meet one in the wild, watch from a distance and leave it undisturbed.
Capture your own Red-tailed Black Shark
Photograph or film one in the wild, at a zoo or at home with the app. It becomes yours: it remembers you, gives you steps, and can debate your problems with your other animals.
Animal field guide
Red-tailed Black Shark
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A small river fish of the carp family from central Thailand, unrelated to true sharks. Fish farms breed it by the thousand, yet it was listed as extinct in the wild until 2011, when a surviving population in the Chao Phraya basin was recognised and the species was re-listed as Critically Endangered.
Native range
Natural range, not this capture location
Lowland rivers and streams of the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand, over rock and sand, and probably the adjoining floodplains in the wet season.
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Size scale
Understand the animal
Understand the Red-tailed Black Shark
Factual biology first: what this animal is like, where it lives, how it survives, and why those traits exist.
01
Introduction to Red-tailed Black Shark
A small river fish of the carp family from central Thailand, unrelated to true sharks. In aquaria it grazes rock and wood with an underslung, rasping mouth. Fish farms breed it by the thousand, yet it was listed as extinct in the wild until 2011, when a surviving population in the Chao Phraya basin was recognised and the species was re-listed as Critically Endangered.
How to identify a Red-tailed Black Shark
- Velvet-black body and fins, apart from the tail
- Deeply forked tail, bright red to orange
- Tall, triangular dorsal fin held stiffly upright
- Downturned mouth with two pairs of short barbels
- Slender body reaching about 12 to 15 centimetres
Why Red-tailed Black Shark are interesting
- Hugh M. Smith described the species in 1931 and reported it as not uncommon in Bueng Boraphet swamp and in the Chao Phraya as far south as Bangkok.
- In aquaria young fish tolerate one another, and aggression towards their own kind grows as they mature.
- An albino form, pale pinkish white with the red tail retained, has been bred for the aquarium trade.
- Keepers report that the red of the tail fades towards pale orange when a fish is stressed, ill or kept in poor water, and deepens again as it recovers.
02
Adaptations and biological abilities
03
Why does Red-tailed Black Shark behave this way?
- Velvet-black body and fins, apart from the tail
- Deeply forked tail, bright red to orange
- Tall, triangular dorsal fin held stiffly upright
- Downturned mouth with two pairs of short barbels
- Slender body reaching about 12 to 15 centimetres
In aquaria it is on the move through the day and busiest around dusk, withdrawing to shelter between bouts and at night.
04
Why Lowland rivers and streams of the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand?
Habitat: Lowland rivers and streams of the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand, over rock and sand, and probably the adjoining floodplains in the wet season.
Native range: Southeast Asia
Native range
Natural range, not this specific capture location.
Lowland rivers and streams of the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand, over rock and sand, and probably the adjoining floodplains in the wet season.
05
Why this diet?
Keepers feed it a mixed diet of algae and plant matter with insect larvae, small crustaceans and worms, and it readily takes prepared foods. Its diet in the wild is poorly documented.
06
Activity, rest, and lifespan
In aquaria it is on the move through the day and busiest around dusk, withdrawing to shelter between bouts and at night.
Commonly 5 to 8 years in aquaria, and sometimes reported beyond 10; no figure exists for wild fish.
07
Red-tailed Black Shark reproduction
Spawning in the wild has never been described. On fish farms, breeders use hormone injections to bring adults into condition; the eggs are scattered, receive no care and hatch within a few days. Breeding in home aquaria is rare.
Colour is the same in both sexes. Mature females tend to be deeper-bodied and rounder in the belly and males slimmer, but young fish cannot be told apart by eye.
08
Predators, threats, and defense
What preys on it in the wild is not on record. Its decline there is blamed mainly on dams and the draining of swamps in the Chao Phraya basin. A startled fish bolts for the nearest crevice.
09
Conservation and rarity
Rarity: Relatively common · 17/100. AnimalDex canonical rarity score: 17/100, maintained by the live indexed species profile.
- Observe from a respectful distance and avoid changing the animal's behavior.
- Do not block feeding, shelter, nesting, or travel routes.
- Use a live camera capture without handling or staging wildlife.
Talk to it
Talk to the Red-tailed Black Shark
It answers as itself: ask about how it lives, or bring it something of yours and hear what it would do, from its own Power.
Anonymous: 6/day. Signed-in: 10/day. Pro: 100/day.
Side by side
The Red-tailed Black Shark, side by side
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Where to find them
Where to find Red-tailed Black Shark
To find Red-tailed Black Shark in the wild, focus on the exact habitat patches that match its body design and daily behavior, not just the broad country where it exists. You usually do better by working one good piece of habitat inside southeast Asia than by covering too much ground.
- Quiet marsh edges, reedbeds, river bends, or shallow wetland margins
- Open grassland edges, lightly wooded plains, or raised ground where you can scan long distances
- Headlands, reef edges, island colonies, tidal channels, or productive coastal water
In the Ark
1 Red-tailed Black Shark is aboard right now.
Since November 5: 1 came aboard.
The Ark is a live, shared animal world. Animals come aboard when people capture them, and live there by rules based on their field guides.
Scientific name
Epalzeorhynchos bicolor
Category
Fish
Habitat
Lowland rivers and streams of the Chao Phraya basin in Thailand, over rock and sand, and probably the adjoining floodplains in the wet season.
Rarity
Relatively common · 17/100
Native range
Southeast Asia
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