I would define a longfin as an artificially selected and fixed trait that causes fins far larger than documented wild specimens.
Fin filaments can be outrageous on some wild fish, usually as part of sexual selection. But no forest spirit has sat down and thought about how they could extend the fins of a wild fish, and no one worked hard to do the culling and choosing necessary to make the fins grow longer. You'll notice in stores that we're rarely looking at a couple of extended fin rays, as we'd see in wild fish, but usually the entire fin that grows very large and is often wrinkled. The guppy endler hybrids @davros has are an exception. They get points on the caudal.
It's important for a wild fish to be able to move, eat and escape danger, but it's worth giving some of that up to be sexy as well, and fin displays are big in a lot of species.
My view is this. Every aquarist is a predator. Every fish we have in a fishtank is the living dead - a zombie of sorts. They have been removed from the environment that created them, and they are out of the breeding population that matters. We are a strange species that doesn't just eat its prey, but that also plays with it with a sincere interest and often a desire to prolong its life. We use creatures to feed our minds, and to try to understand our place in the world. Or to to look at because they're pretty. Both ways work for us.
We get both artistic and practical with our zombies. We modify farm animals for better yields, etc, and we modify fish in pursuit of some goal connected to our love of beauty or of novelty. Or, we like to show off what we can do. If we are responsible, we never release our experiments into the wild, because our games can cause harm. The fish we capture or have had captured and bred for us can be baked into all kinds of recipes - hybrids, longfins, banner tails...
If I see a newly found fish, I like to see how it lives in an aquarium as close to its habitat as I can set up. Why? I've asked myself that many times, and it seems to stop at my curiosity having fixed itself on underwater life. I watched some wild type Poecilia butleri mollies when I was 8 years old and wanted to know what they were doing and why, why they were shaped like that, and why they had those colours. So I see a new fish, and I want to watch it. I want to breed it, and I want to make the young available to likeminded aquarists. I want to share info on it, if anyone cares. Sometimes, I have been able to make small contributions to the scientific study of fish, and that's very worthwhile on a larger stage. But fundamentally, fancy fish, wild fish, long fins, natural fins - whatever. They are all zombie fish removed from what matters, and we're all strange humans with an instinct to learn. We shouldn't use our skills to be monsters and create suffering, even if it pays. But if we are comfortable that we can provide good environments to healthy zombies, they're good company. There is a huge amount to be learned, and there is a lot of beauty to be appreciated.
Fin filaments can be outrageous on some wild fish, usually as part of sexual selection. But no forest spirit has sat down and thought about how they could extend the fins of a wild fish, and no one worked hard to do the culling and choosing necessary to make the fins grow longer. You'll notice in stores that we're rarely looking at a couple of extended fin rays, as we'd see in wild fish, but usually the entire fin that grows very large and is often wrinkled. The guppy endler hybrids @davros has are an exception. They get points on the caudal.
It's important for a wild fish to be able to move, eat and escape danger, but it's worth giving some of that up to be sexy as well, and fin displays are big in a lot of species.
My view is this. Every aquarist is a predator. Every fish we have in a fishtank is the living dead - a zombie of sorts. They have been removed from the environment that created them, and they are out of the breeding population that matters. We are a strange species that doesn't just eat its prey, but that also plays with it with a sincere interest and often a desire to prolong its life. We use creatures to feed our minds, and to try to understand our place in the world. Or to to look at because they're pretty. Both ways work for us.
We get both artistic and practical with our zombies. We modify farm animals for better yields, etc, and we modify fish in pursuit of some goal connected to our love of beauty or of novelty. Or, we like to show off what we can do. If we are responsible, we never release our experiments into the wild, because our games can cause harm. The fish we capture or have had captured and bred for us can be baked into all kinds of recipes - hybrids, longfins, banner tails...
If I see a newly found fish, I like to see how it lives in an aquarium as close to its habitat as I can set up. Why? I've asked myself that many times, and it seems to stop at my curiosity having fixed itself on underwater life. I watched some wild type Poecilia butleri mollies when I was 8 years old and wanted to know what they were doing and why, why they were shaped like that, and why they had those colours. So I see a new fish, and I want to watch it. I want to breed it, and I want to make the young available to likeminded aquarists. I want to share info on it, if anyone cares. Sometimes, I have been able to make small contributions to the scientific study of fish, and that's very worthwhile on a larger stage. But fundamentally, fancy fish, wild fish, long fins, natural fins - whatever. They are all zombie fish removed from what matters, and we're all strange humans with an instinct to learn. We shouldn't use our skills to be monsters and create suffering, even if it pays. But if we are comfortable that we can provide good environments to healthy zombies, they're good company. There is a huge amount to be learned, and there is a lot of beauty to be appreciated.
and throw themselves down demanding to be cuddled. But is this a bad thing? - they are house cats and will never be expected to fend for themselves in the wild.
