Neervana;1787248; said:
its horrible what happened, some ppl may get offended about what im about to say next, but its my own opinion: i dont think its right for zoos to keep animals in captivity like that and most of all to "trim" the rays just too keep ppl from getting hurt. if those rays had been in the wild, then nothing like this would have happened. maybe that hippo died as well from stress or something, but animals are not meant to be in captivity. if they are tank bred...thats another question. but if they are taken from the wild and imprisoned for our own enjoyment then thats not good. like this article i read about a massive ray that was captured, she soon gave birth to a pup after - probably because of stress, but now that pup is open to public attention, why cant they just leave her and her pup alone? this stuff isn't good.
I don't totally disagree with her. I love my fish as much as you guys love yours, and in no way I disagree that they are living creatures deserving a good life and care... but THEY ARE FISH, not tigers or bears or cats or bats ... fish. They possess intelligence and can get bored like any animal... but their intelligence is different. There is a huge difference between a bottle nose dolphin and a blue gourami.
A fish that is well housed will act normally, depict natural behaviour and spend little to no time pacing in their aquariums.
A dolphin in a pool at seaworld wil spend its days pacing and depicting highly stressed and abnormal behaviour, clearly showing that it is not well.
The same goes for most zoo animals that spend their days pacing endlessly the same way in their tiny cages. Its kinda hard to put a pride of lions in a cage big enough that will equate its natural territory size (which are miles and miles), and with a variety if live preys ect.. so they are put in less-than adequate cages.
Different creatures also have different requirements based on how intelligent ect they are, a tiger will be happy with little more than a large territory and preys to hunt... while a dolphin (with self-awareness) also needs to fufill needs of complex socialisation, feed their endless curiosity with daily discoveries, learn a fairly complex language, develop new hunting techniques, interact with all that is around it, swim hundreds of miles, get constant brain stimuli, ect... not quite what they get in a tiny pool at seaworld with millions of shouting people everyday and having to perform the same tricks day after day after day! Not surprising they often die within the first 2 years of captivity!!
Fish require an adequate territory, food, good water parameters, and entertainement too! Just not the same as other animals do!
I never see my betta pacing, its always carefully watching over its territory, checking out to see if things have changed, playing in the water filtration flow, foraging to find leftover shrimp pellets, watching my boyfriend at his computer, digging tunnels in the java moss, playing with the green moss-ball, watching the shrimps and many more!
Because of this I believe I can safely assume that he is well in his "cage", but if he were to pace and show constant signs of innactivity and lack of interaction I would think twice about keeping him in those conditions, and would try to find a new home for him.
Thats one of my biggest concern as someone who wishes to keep more fish, I don't want to know how many fish I can CRAM in a small 15 gallon, I need a fish that will be well in it.
I know myself! If the fish has nothing to do all day long in his little tank, than I will have no pleasure keeping it at all and start feeling real bad!
