carp

carp

carp, hardy freshwater fish, Cyprinus carpio, the largest member of the minnow family; it is also known as the common carp. A native of Black, Caspian, and Aral sea basins of Eurasia, the carp has been introduced widely elsewhere in the world and has become so well established that it is called the English sparrow of the fishes. Many variations in color and form have developed. Carp have four barbels (“whiskers”) around the mouth and are usually dark greenish or brown (occasionally yellowish or silvery), with red on some of the fins. Most carp are scaled, although the mirror carp variant has only a few scattered scales and the leather carp has none. Carp may reach a length of 3 ft (91 cm) and a weight of 25 lbs (11.3 kg). They are bottom feeders, eating chiefly aquatic plants but also insects and small animals; their habit of rooting in the mud often makes the water unfit for the feeding and spawning of other fish, and they compete with waterfowl for food. However, they are valued commercially as food fish, especially in Europe, where they are sometimes bred and raised for this purpose. In the United States, the introduced carp has thrived in parts of the Midwest, and is regarded as an invasive species; it can be destructive to the aquatic ecosystem and displace native species. Ornamental varieties are bred in Japan. See also Asian carp. The common carp are classified in the phylum Chordata, class Actinopterygii, order Cypriniformes, family Cyprinidae.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Carp

 

(Rutilus frisii), a fish of the carp family. Body length, 75 cm; weight, 6 kg. Distributed in the basins of the Black and Azov seas, they enter the mouths of rivers and travel far upstream. They spawn in the second half of May on rocky stretches of rivers with swift, clean water and a rocky bottom. They feed mostly on bottom mollusks, whose shells they crush with powerful gullet teeth. A special subspecies, the kutum, a valuable commercial fish, lives in the basins of the Caspian Sea. Their numbers are not great and continue to grow smaller because of unfavorable conditions for reproduction.

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Carp

 

(Cyprinus carpio), a fish of the family Cyprinidae of the order Cypriniformes. The carp reaches a length of 1 m and a weight of 12 kg. The fish inhabits Lake Issyk-Kul’ and the basins of the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Aral seas. It also dwells in rivers of East Asia and of the western basin of the Pacific Ocean. Carps are raised artificially in Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and Great Britain. In the USSR the fish has been acclimatized in the Barabinskie lakes, Lake Balkhash, and Lake Alakol’. There are resident and migratory forms. The former live permanently in a single body of water, and the latter live in freshened areas of seas or lakes and migrate from spawning estuarine areas into rivers. Carps attain sexual maturity in the second to fifth year of life. They produce about 1.5 million roe. Spawning is intermittent, from April through July, occurring among soft vegetation in fresh or brackish coastal waters having a temperature of 12°–20°C. The roe are sticky. Carps feed on invertebrates and plants. They are commercially valuable. A cultivated form has been obtained by selection.

Z. V. KRASIUKOVA

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

carp

[kärp]

(vertebrate zoology)

The common name for a number of fresh-water, cypriniform fishes in the family Cyprinidae, characterized by soft fins, pharyngeal teeth, and a suckerlike mouth.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

carp

a pictorial symbol of bravery. [Chinese and Jap. Folklore: Jobes, 292]

See: Bravery

Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

carp

1. a freshwater teleost food fish, Cyprinus carpio, having a body covered with cycloid scales, a naked head, one long dorsal fin, and two barbels on each side of the mouth: family Cyprinidae

2. any other fish of the family Cyprinidae; a cyprinid

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

CARP

(Cache Array Routing Protocol) A protocol from Microsoft that is used by one proxy server to query another for a cached Web page without having to go to the Internet to retrieve it. CARP allows arrays of cache servers to be used and managed as a single entity, which avoids redundancy and supports failover and load balancing. See ICP and proxy server.

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