Sturgeon once occupied an important and special position in the history and culture of China. There are many records about sturgeon in The Book of Songs, which is a collection of poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period (1 1 century to the 6th century BC). Even in ancient times, giant sturgeons were not easy to see. Coupled with the myth of ancient poetry, it casts a mysterious veil on sturgeon.
The image of the paddlefish as a sacrifice also frequently appears in cultural relics, such as the golden belt with the pattern of paddlefish found in Jinsha site, which depicts the long kiss of two big fish as a typical feature of paddlefish, indicating the special position of paddlefish in ancient Shu culture 3,000 years ago.
Brief introduction of Chinese sturgeon
The paddlefish is a kind of fish of the genus paddlefish. The body length is 2 ~ 3 meters, the weight is 200 ~ 300 kilograms, and the maximum length can reach 7.5 meters. The paddlefish is a large carnivorous fish that lives in the Yangtze River and is unique to China. In ancient China, the white sturgeon was called tuna, which swam back to the river in spring to lay eggs.
It is mainly produced in Yibin, the main tributary of the Yangtze River in China, and also distributed in Qiantang River and the lower reaches of the Yellow River. Rare animals in China belong to national first-class wildlife protection and are known as "giant pandas in water". On June 2, 2020,65438+news, the Yangtze River paddlefish failed to enter 2020 and was declared extinct on February 23, 20 19. On the evening of July 2 1 2022, IUCN released an update report on the global red list of species, announcing the extinction of the paddlefish.