Species profile
About the lake tanganyika cichlids
Lake Tanganyika is the world's second-deepest and second-oldest lake, and its isolation over roughly ten million years has produced one of the most celebrated evolutionary radiations on the planet: some 250 cichlid species, the overwhelming majority found in this lake and nowhere else.
The variety of behaviour is as remarkable as the variety of colour. Some species are mouthbrooders that carry eggs and fry in the throat; others breed exclusively inside empty snail shells; others are specialist scale-eaters, sand-sifters or algae-scrapers. At Mahale Mountains National Park the shoreline shelves gently into exceptionally clear water, and a mask and snorkel a few metres from the beach is enough to see dozens of species — a rare chance to pair a chimpanzee trek with world-class freshwater snorkelling.
Life in the wild
Behavior & relationships
Behavior
Behaviour varies enormously by species: territorial rock-grazers, shoaling open-water hunters, sand-sifters, shell-dwellers and specialist scale-eaters all share the same shoreline.
Social life
Includes monogamous pairs, harems, colonial shell-bed breeders and cooperatively breeding species in which older offspring help raise later broods — among the few fish known to do so.
What makes it remarkable
Special features
One of the great evolutionary radiations on earth — around 250 species, almost all endemic to this single lake, including the world’s only cooperatively breeding fish and species that live entirely inside empty snail shells.