![flesh water dogfish flesh water dogfish](https://pixnio.com/free-images/fauna-animals/fishes/bowfin-dogfish-lawyer-grinner-fish-amica-calva.jpg)
They are stalking, ambush predators known to move into the shallows at night to prey on fish and aquatic invertebrates such as crawfish, mollusks, and aquatic insects. Their preferred habitat includes vegetated sloughs, lowland rivers and lakes, swamps, and backwater areas they are also occasionally found in brackish water. Now, their range is limited to much of the eastern United States and adjacent southern Canada, including the drainage basins of the Mississippi River, Great Lakes, and various rivers exiting in the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf of Mexico. Fossil deposits indicate Amiiformes were once widespread in both freshwater and marine environments across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The closest living relatives of bowfins are gars, with the two groups being united in the clade Holostei.īowfins are demersal freshwater piscivores, commonly found throughout much of the eastern United States, and in southern Ontario and Quebec. The bowfin is often considered a " primitive fish" because they have retained some morphological characteristics of their early ancestors. It is regarded as a relict, being the sole surviving species of the Halecomorphi, a group of fish that first appeared during the Early Triassic, around 250 million years ago. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, grindle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. The bowfin ( Amia calva) is a bony fish, native to North America.