Question About Unsold Bettas At Pet Stores.

[RandomWiktor]

I'll def. search and get back to you on it ; I read about most of it in books and magazines, and I believe Scientific American had an article on some of the said experiments once. In the mean time, here's an adorable picture of a calico fantail who was trained to push a mini soccer ball into a goal, and a quote from the National Geographic article:

Albert Einstein, a calico fantail goldfish, is not your ordinary pet goldfish. He has learned to take food from his owner's hand, swim through hoops and tubes, and even put a miniature soccer ball into a goal!
....
The Pomerleaus bought a "finger soccer" kit from a dollar store and put weights on the tiny net and ball so they would sink to the bottom of the tank.
First Albert earned a food reward every time he swam toward the net. This training technique is called positive reinforcement. The fish likes the treat, so it learns to repeat the action to get additional treats.
Once Albert learned to go toward the net, Kyle and his dad added a new step—ball handling. Eventually Albert learned to push a ball into a goal.
The trainer learns patience and persistence, the father-son team says. It may take five or six training sessions a day for three weeks to teach a fish to swim through a hoop. Just like kids, individual fish learn at different speeds!

And a link on training fish, including goldies, bettas, and oscars: Link There is a photo gallery of the subject goldfish playing "football," "soccer," swimming through hoops and tubes, being hand fed, swimming under a "hurdle," etc.

Ah, and here is a link about goldfish memory, which is apparenly up to three months. It also discusses their 'internal clock.' Interesting stuff.

And a link about avoidance learning.

It is worth remembering that young, sickly goldfish crammed by the hundreds into an over-crowded, unclean, stressful aquarium in a feeder tank are a poor representation of the species. If you wanted to study the interactions and behavior of pigs, would you seek feral boar, or a sow in a gestation crate on a factory farm? If you wished to study the behavior of tigers, would you research them in the wild, or performing tricks inbetween intense confinement at a circus? Goldfish in pet stores are out of their element - severely - and can not be considered accurate representations of their intelligence and behavior.

 

[Liberty802]

I always feel bad for the bettas (and other fishies) at those huge corporate chain stores. such as petco, petsmart, walmart, etc. I went into a petsmart once, every bit of empty space in the fish section was filled with cups upon cups filled with bettas in dirty water, and they had just gotten a new shipment of fish in that day and there were at least 7 big boxes filled to the brim with cups of bettas, it made me sick One thing I can say though is that employees who care can make a big difference. Over the summer I worked at a wal*mart in the pets section (I specifically requested it) when I started working there we would get in 20 male bettas and 10 female bettas every friday regardless of how many we had sold the week before. But I talked to my department manager and convinced him to only order enough bettas to fill the spots of those we had sold, sometimes it was off cause the order went in on wednesdays, but there were NEVER more than 30 bettas there at a time, and I tried my best to get people to buy the fish that I knew had been there the longest. The betta cups (as well as all of the fish tanks) got cleaned once a day, I usually spent 4-5 hours of my 8 hour shift taking care of the fish, it was heaven!!

 

[Mugen]

XD Oh my god. That photo of Albert pushing the little soccerball is possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

 

[PookPook]

Albert has nothing on the betta that runs obstacle courses I saw on tv, I think it was either KBS or Animal Planet.

As for pet store betta, every time i see them I get one step closer to total store boycotts. As for the chain stores, their "health" is differnt from one location to the next. Some have lethargic bettas lying on their sides, other have zippy ones. Some carry only a dozen happy fish and some carry hundreds of whithering fish. For example, one Petco/Petsmart is not the same as the other Petco/Petsmart the next town over. I have noticed it as an individual store thing. Its just upsetting hearing about unsold bettas being euthanized and seeing dead ones in cups at the store...They get just as much dissrespect in some locations as those tubs full of feeder fish, and the betta will be kept as a pet not as a food. I think they are treated that way because a nice portion of them kinda look like the same little "who knows what they bred him from" betta. I am sure it would be treated differntly if it was somesorty of 10-20 dollar or higher black orchid half moon or something very stunning looking. And yes, I have seen very beautiful pet store bettas, but I am just saying, as with dogs, people like eugenics in their pets and given higher prices a bit more respect because there is more profit to lose. In the end, It comes down to money and profit, just like everying else in the corperate world...

 

[pica_nuttalli]

which is exactly why we don't encourage people to breed bettas with unknown parentage. hundreds of bettas suffer and die on a daily basis because the market is glutted with $3 disposable pets. with that in mind, how can you justify breeding two randomly selected VTs?

(as for intelligence: guppies are dumb as a post and PLENTY of people love them. just take a brief look in the Common Livebearers section and you'll easily find 20 posts devoted to saving every last fry ever born to a .99 cent fish. )

 

[jfeld]

Holy crap, the video with that fish playing soccer is effin amazing (excuse my language).

 

[lisa_perry75]

I would say its not the employees fault, so please don't blame us!

I think it is a profit thing, as they buy them i for what 30-40 pence, so spending hours a day cleaning them out isn't cost effective for the bosses.

If you speak to them about the conditions, most will change their ways as many people have reported.

I would worry more about where all the bettas are going! SO many people still think bettas are quite happy in community tanks, and are quite shocked when you give them the limited amount of fish you can keep them with.

We need to stop this at source at the LFS. Maybe the IBC chapters could enforce rules for LFS like a care sheet HAS to be sold with every betta.

 

[Richie Hell]

The worst thing I ever saw was a dead Betta floating round a tank at Pets at Home in Norwich. He'd had his fins completely eaten away. I think he was in a tank with some sort of Barbs.