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Showing posts from December, 2010

mirror, mirror.

they always looked so lonely to me, and i never understood how people could be so cruel as to keep them in such a small bowl, floating in one place for, well... for the rest of their lives. siamese fighting fish, or betta fish, live solitary lives not because it is cruel as i had thought growing up, but because in most situations they will attack or kill any other betta fish they are near, as they are very territorial. i recently visited my brother tim in washington, dc, and he had one such amazing fish. it had a beautiful long tail, multi colored in purple and blue's. we began to talk about it and he was telling me random facts and behaviors of this 'lonely' fish and mentioned its aversion to mirrors. i had never heard about this and so tim showed me, the 'trick' is to hold a mirror up to the tank of the siamese fighting fish and it will puff up to more than twice its size because it thinks that in the mirror is another betta fish and must now defend its terr