70: Mountain Sucker

I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. Before we start with today’s animal, I want to emphasize that biological classification as understood by western society has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.

While the name “mountain sucker” (Catostomus platyrhynchus) sounds like it should be a 1991 Billy Crystal film, it is actually a happy, healthy species of fish that is of least concern as far as being endangered goes, and that lives on both sides of the Rocky Mountains in the western United States. They can live up to 9200 feet above sea level and spend their time in icy cold streams, eating a mainly herbivorous diet of algae and aquatic plants found amongst the pebbles with the occasional invertebrate thrown in for variety.

Suckers belong to the family Catostomidae, whose oldest fossil remains come from the Middle Eocene in Colorado and Utah. The Eocene has been on my mind a lot lately because it was the last time that Earth’s atmospheric CO2 was near what it is today. It was a hot and humid time, to say the least. Suckers evolved though, so that’s cool. Almost all of the sucker species alive in North America, with a few exceptions in Russia and China. So what makes something a sucker? “Suckers do not have teeth in the mouth. They have a single row of more than 16 pharyngeal teeth, which are toothlike structures located in the throat that aide in digestion. The fleshy-lipped mouth is small, low and directed downward, which suits the way Suckers feed. Most obtain food by “vacuuming” or “sucking” it into the mouth.” Any time we’re talking about teeth in a part of the body that is different than where teeth are in MY body, I’m instantly fascinated.

Mountain suckers are also quite long lived for fish – the maximum known age for females, who are thought to be longer lived than males, is nine years. Like several of the other fish we’ve learned about, the populations of these fish were dispersed during periods of glaciation/the ends and beginnings of glaciation, when water flowed over much of the western landscape. Since the end of that period around 12,000 years ago, mountain suckers and their sucker cousins in other parts of western North America have been in isolation from each other and have evolved into distinctive species.

Thanks as always for reading – tomorrow we are going to learn about a mammal that I previously knew nothing about and in fact had never even heard of!