All printables
African lungfish — printable fact sheet
Free to print or save as PDF. Great for classrooms, homeschooling, and young explorers.
Creature Atlas
Animal Fact Sheet
Name: ____________________
Date: ____________________
African lungfish
Protopterus annectens
An African lungfish will drown if you hold it underwater. Its gills are vestigial and it must surface to fill a pair of true lungs — an obligate air-breather among fish. When its swamp dries, it burrows into the mud, secretes a mucus cocoon that hardens around it leaving a breat…
Did you know?
- The African lungfish can slow its metabolism by up to 60% and survive for years in a dormant state during droughts.
- The marbled lungfish, Protopterus aethiopicus, has the largest genome of any animal yet measured — roughly forty times the size of a human's, so bloated with repetitive DNA that its cells are visibly enormous. In parts of West Africa, dried lungfish cocoons dug out of hardened mud have been shipped to laboratories and revived weeks later by simply adding water. A lungfish that has aestivated too long will emerge emaciated, having partly digested its own muscle tissue.
What I learned
Draw the african lungfish
© Creature Atlas · www.creatureatlas.com · Free for classroom & personal use
Want the whole set?
Get printable fact-sheet packs, coloring pages, and classroom worksheet bundles for dozens of animals — ready to download and print.
Browse printable packsGet a free printable each week
Join the newsletter for a new Creature of the Week + printables.