Catfish that looks like a cow caught by a fisherman oklahoma

Oklahoma fisherman posts photos on public group on Facebook asking if anybody could identify the catfish that looks like a cow. Photo: Oklahoma Fishing Fools Facebook page.

Sometimes fish look like cows.

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Such was the case in Oklahoma where an unidentified fisherman recently caught a catfish that looked like a cow with a white body and black spots, as first reported by KFOR News in Oklahoma City.

Austin Claunch posted the photos on Oklahoma Fishing Fools, a public group on Facebook, and asked, “Has anyone ever seen anything like this?? This fish was caught at Lake Eufaula.”

Turns out, a handful of fishermen on the site said they had seen catfish that look like cows before, though the coloring of this catfish was far more vivid and representative of a cow than those posted by others.

The catfish that looks like a cow caught in Oklahoma is a piebald. Photo: Oklahoma Fishing Fools Facebook page

So what’s up with the catfish that looks like a cow?

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation explained it this way in an email to GrindTV: “It was just a regular channel catfish. Piebald’s are abnormalities in the animal kingdom. They occur occasionally in most all animal species. It was just a genetic malfunction.”

Piebald is defined as spotted or blotched with black and white. The rare catfish was also described as a leucistic catfish, which is essential the same as piebald.

Of course, the commenters on Facebook had funnier explanations, milking it for all it was worth:
“There’s a perfect explanation for this, ya see. It’s that Holstein calf that swam too much.”
“Not a catfish, it’s a cowfish.”
“Holstein…dairy fish.”
“Appaloosa flathead.”

It also kinda looks like an orca, the catfish version.