- Animals
- ›Chordates
- ›Vertebrates
- ›Ray-finned Fishes
- ›Carps, Characins, Catfishes and Allies
- ›Catfishes
- ›Loricarioidei
- ›Pencil Catfishes

Vampire Catfishes
Vandelliinae
The Vandelliinae are a subfamily of catfishes (order Siluriformes) of the family Trichomycteridae. Vandelliines are hematophagous, feeding on the blood of larger fish. Members of this subfamily may be known as candirú, notorious for occasionally entering human bodily orifices, particularly the urethra; no evidence indicates such attacks are anything more than rare and accidental perversions of the usual feeding behaviour of the parasite — it seems unlikely that it would survive in the human body for...
4 branches of this subfamily, most-observed first · about 24 known species

Paravandellia
genusParavandellia
Vandellia
genusVandellia

Paracanthopoma
genusParacanthopoma
Plectrochilus
genusPlectrochilus
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Vandelliinae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 544358.