The scats are a small family, Scatophagidae, of fishes in the order Perciformes

Perciformes

The Perciformes, also called the Percomorphi or Acanthopteri, is one of the largest orders of vertebrates, containing about 40% of all bony fish. Perciformes means perch-like. They belong to the class of ray-finned fish and comprise over 7,000 species found in almost all aquatic environments...

.

They are small fish native to the Indian

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 and western Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 that have been popular in the aquarium trade

Aquarium

An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...

 in the last 30 years. Although juvenile scats may live in a freshwater environment, most adult scats prefer and do best in a brackish water

Brackish water

Brackish water is water that has more salinity than fresh water, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing of seawater with fresh water, as in estuaries, or it may occur in brackish fossil aquifers. The word comes from the Middle Dutch root "brak," meaning "salty"...

 environment with 3-4 teaspoons of salt per 2.5 gallons of water once they reach adulthood. However, the African Scat, Scatophagus tetracanthus, can and does live in freshwater in the wild and is even known to reproduce in freshwater. The largest species reaches 38 cm in length and some have been known to live more than twenty years in captivity given the proper water conditions. They are scavengers, feeding on algae

Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

 and feces

Feces

Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...

, hence their name, from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 skatos meaning "feces" and phagein meaning "eat".

Species

There are four species in two genera.

• Genus Scatophagus Cuvier
  Georges Cuvier
  Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
  
   in Cuvier
  Georges Cuvier
  Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
  
   and Valenciennes
  Achille Valenciennes
  Achille Valenciennes was a French zoologist.Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. Valenciennes' study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology...
  
  , 1831
  • Scatophagus argus
    Scatophagus argus
    Scatophagus argus belong to the scat family and occur in 2 basic color morphs which are called Green Scat and Ruby Scat or Red Scat. As a whole, the species is called Spotted Scat. This fish is generally distributed around the Indo-Pacific region, to Japan, New Guinea and Southeastern Australia...
    
    – Common Scat, Green Scat, Ruby Scat
  • Scatophagus tetracanthus – African Scat (Lacépède, 1802).
• Genus Selenotoca Myers, 1936
  • Selenotoca multifasciata – Silver Scat (Richardson
    John Richardson (naturalist)
    Sir John Richardson was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer.Richardson was born at Dumfries. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and became a surgeon in the navy in 1807. He traveled with John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage on the Coppermine Expedition of...
    
    , 1846).
  • Selenotoca papuensis – Moon Scat Fraser-Brunner, 1938.