Scatophagus
genus of fishes
Scatophagus is a genus of ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Scatophagidae. They are found in the Indo-Pacific region. Species in this genus are referred as spotted scats.
Taxonomy
Scatophagus was first formally described as a genus in 1831 by the French zoologist Georges Cuvier with Chaetodon argus which had been described from India by Linnaeus in 1766 later designated as the type species. The genus name is a compound of skatos meaning "dung" and phaga which means to eat, a reference to this species purported taste for human faeces.
Species
The genus Scatophagus contains three extant species:
Scatophagus argus (Linnaeus, 1766) (Spotted scat)
Scatophagus magnus (Endruweit, 2024)
Scatophagus tetracanthus (Lacépède, 1802) (African scat)
Several fossil species (Scatophagus frontalis Agassiz, 1839 from the Early Eocene, Scatophagus capellinii Bassani, 1889 from the Early Oligocene) from Italy were previously placed in this genus. However, more recent studies indicate that while they are scats, they are unique enough belong to their own genera, and have thus placed them in Eoscatophagus and Oligoscatophagus.
Characteristics
Scatophagus species have highly compressed, rectangular bodies. The dorsal profile of the head rises steeply to the nape, they have a rounded snout, as is the space between the eyes. The small mouth is horizontal, and cannot be protruded, and has several rows of small bristle like teeth on the jaws teeth in several rows.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Scatophagus” is genus of fishes. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Scatophagus, genus and fishes, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1285940. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1831, 1766, 2024 and 1802.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scatophagus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.