A short video posted on social media in 2024 has helped scientists uncover a creature never before recorded from the Gangetic Basin — a tiny, colourless underground fish living beneath the Indo-Gangetic Plain in Bihar. Researchers from Mumbai-based Thackeray Wildlife Foundation (TWF) have described the fish as a new genus and species, Gangaichthys indonepalicus, an earthworm eel that appears to have evolved several adaptations to survive in complete darkness. It is the first subterranean, or stygobitic (living underground, beneath the surface of the soil or rock), fish recorded from the Gangetic Basin.

Video leads to probe

The discovery was made by Akshay Khandekar, Ishan Agarwal, and Tejas Thackeray from the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation, along with You He from the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Anil Mohapatra from the Zoological Survey of India. The investigation began after the researchers came across a video showing an unusual tiny fish emerging from a borewell near the India-Nepal border.