Guwahati: A village well in Assam’s Goalpara district has yielded an extraordinary discovery—a blind, blood-red eel that has spent its entire life hidden beneath the ground, offering fresh evidence that Northeast India’s aquifers may harbour a wealth of undiscovered life.
The new species, Rakthamichthys anchi, has been described in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. It is the first subterranean swamp eel of its genus to be recorded from Northeast India, extending the known range of these elusive fishes beyond the Western Ghats.
The study was carried out by Ralf Britz and Amanda K. Pinion of the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, Germany; Wimarithy K. Marak and Kangjam Velentina of Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati; and Yumnam Lokeshwor of Dhanamanjuri University, Imphal.
The eel lives in groundwater trapped beneath the surface. Researchers collected just four specimens from two dug-out wells, each about seven metres deep, in a village in Goalpara district. Fearing the species could be threatened, they have deliberately withheld the exact location of the discovery.
Life in complete darkness has shaped the fish’s evolution. It has no externally visible eyes and almost no body pigment. Its striking blood-red appearance comes from blood vessels showing through its translucent skin, a feature that inspired the name anchi, the Garo word for “blood.”
The discovery is particularly significant because it comes from the same village where scientists recently described Gitchak nakana, another underground fish species. Two new subterranean fishes from a single locality suggest that the aquifers beneath Assam may support an entire ecosystem that has remained hidden from science.
Researchers used high-resolution micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to create detailed three-dimensional images of the eel’s skeleton without damaging the rare specimens. DNA analysis further confirmed that it is genetically distinct from all known members of the genus.
Like other swamp eels, Rakthamichthys anchi can breathe atmospheric air, enabling it to survive in oxygen-poor groundwater. It also lacks the fins found in most fishes, giving it a slender, worm-like body adapted to moving through narrow subterranean spaces.
Co-author Yumnam Lokeshwor said the discovery highlights the urgent need to protect the little-known ecosystems that exist beneath the ground.
“We need proper public awareness that there is an interesting life form beneath our feet. We should not extract too much water from aquifers, as it will put more pressure and stress on these underground paradises of the living world,” he said.
Lokeshwor said the discovery opens up exciting scientific questions about how such species survive in complete isolation beneath the Earth’s surface.
“It will be very interesting to understand how they communicate and their resilience and survival under the crust of the Earth. It may provide a better understanding of the living world,” he said.
He noted that the discovery is the first of its kind from Northeast India, part of the globally recognised Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot, where illegal rat-hole mining continues in several areas.
“The government has to take up an initiative to explore these resources and develop strategies to conserve them,” Lokeshwor said.
The discovery adds to growing evidence that while Northeast India’s forests and rivers have been extensively studied, the region’s underground aquifers remain one of its least explored frontiers, with the potential to reveal many more species unknown to science.
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