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Scientists soon began studying this first recorded subterranean eel-like fish in the Gangetic Basin and named it Gangaichthys indonepalicus . But studying the new species was no easy task. The international team of scientists had to manually pump thousands of litres of groundwater in Bihar to collect three specimens. The scientists behind this discovery included those from the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation in Mumbai, Shivaji University in Kolhapur, the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Zoological Survey of India.
In 2024 a short video clip circulated on TikTok showed an unknown, tiny, colourless creature emerge from a borewell near the border between India and Nepal, beneath the Indo-Gangetic plain. The first individual was caught after the researchers pumped 2,000 litres of water from borewells (a machine-drilled shaft used to access water from underground aquifers), but it succumbed to injuries. Then, after pumping 500 more litres of water, a second live specimen emerged. For the study, the scientists sampled more than 15 borewells which they pumped by hand; they were able to collect three specimens of the new species from two borewells.
The unique morphology of the fish in the TikTok video, “and the fact that there are no known stygobitic fish [aquatic animals that live in underground water] known from the region, motivated us to track down the species to ascertain its identity,” said the scientists in a release.
