Esox

Esox is a genus of freshwater fish commonly known as pike or pickerel. It is the type genus of the family Esocidae. The type species of the genus is Esox lucius, the northern pike. Esox have a fossil record extending back to the Paleocene. Modern large pike species are native to the Palearctic and Nearctic realms, ranging across Northern America and from Western Europe to Siberia in North Asia. Pike have the elongated, torpedo-like shape typical of predatory fishes, with sharply pointed heads and sharp teeth. Their coloration is typically grey-green with a mottled or spotted appearance with stripes along their backs, providing camouflage among underwater weeds, and each individual pike marking patterns are unique like fingerprints. Pikes can grow to a maximum recorded length of 1.50 m (5 ft), reaching a maximum recorded weight of 55 lb, 1 oz. They are a long lived species and the skeleton of a particularly large example held in a museum in Mannheim in the nineteenth century was thought to have been up to 100 years old.