Channallabes is a genus of air-breathing catfishes in the walking-catfish family Clariidae, found across Central and West African countries including Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Atlas species range from roughly 5.5–16.5 in. Like other clariids they carry an accessory air-breathing organ that lets them survive in oxygen-poor swamps and forest streams, but Channallabes takes the family's elongated body plan to an extreme.
The eel catfish, Channallabes apus, is better known in the scientific literature than in the aquarium trade: it has lost its pectoral fins entirely and evolved an extraordinarily elongated, limbless body, and researchers have documented it capturing prey on land by arching its body and striking at insects on wet mud and vegetation - a striking example of a fish feeding outside water. The rest of the genus is poorly documented; the atlas records mostly Data Deficient and unassessed species, with only one formally Least Concern, reflecting how little survey effort has reached these swamp-forest habitats.