Yes, they’re considered domesticated. Humans have kept them for multiple, multiple generations and selectively bred them to an extent that they are now very different genetically and phenotypically from their wild ancestors.
That’s the result of a long period of selective breeding. There’s some pretty strange shapes we’ve bred into those fish, several of them making me downright uncomfortable. Some of these fish can’t see in front of their face, they can’t see what they’re eating. They’re pretty, but I wish people would remember these things are alive too.
I was very keen on Bettas in my adolescence. I think the most I had was twelve at one point. I would classify them as domesticated as well, because we took a fish like this:
and bred them into these:
They’re genetically and phenotypically different from the wild type betta. It shows, too. Breeding half-moons and over half-moons is very challenging, especially if you’re using a ‘quality’ male. The volume of finnage they have to drag around is huge, and they breed by wrapping their body around a female and squeezing her. The female is lucky enough to have much shorter fins.
They are very pretty and I like them a lot, these little fish to actually have personality and attitude, but I also feel like going beyond super delta is too far.
The welfare aspects of breeding fish to such extreme shapes s generally overlooked, and will probably remain that was because fish are often viewed more like ornaments than like animals. I hope that changes, but I doubt it will happen very soon.
And I’d like to take a moment to indulge a pet peeve. Someone, somewhere, had the bright idea of taking my favorite species of fish, the beautiful pearl gourami…
… and inbreeding it to the point where we end up with creatures like this…
I mean, WHY did you have to do this? It just saddens me like you wouldn’t believe.
Just because we can do these things, doesn’t always mean we should.
It’s basically a massive database full of high-quality images of different hairstyles. I mean, look at all the options in that sidebar (and part of it’s cut off):
In total they have 976 pages of hairstyles with about 17 styles each, that’s about 16592 hairstyles to look at.
When all-male gangs wouldn’t let them join, all-female “sukeban” gangs formed their own identities – starting with the uniform.
Between the layers of clothing, sukeban girls would conceal weapons – razors, chains and anything else that one ought to take a jot more seriously than a yo-yo. Indeed, the sukeban sisterhood rivalled their male equivalents for violence and crime: facing off with rival factions, punishing girls within their own group (e.g. for cheating with someone else’s boyfriend), or generally colouring suburban ennui with a splash of petty crime. What’s more, Yakuza-style levels of organisation meant that, at the subculture’s peak, the largest alliance had over 20,000 teenage girls sworn in.
They even inspired a series of exploitation-style movies, akin to the works of Russ Meyer. These movies bore titles like Delinquent Girl Boss,Girl Boss (Sukeban), and Terrifying Girls’ High School.
It continues today in the form of all-female bosozoku biker gangs:
As the expectations for young women to marry and settle continue to be a fact of life in Japan, so too has this all-girl outlaw subculture prevailed as an alternative narrative for young women. Today, you can spot them by their embellished and embroidered jumpsuits, floral tattoos, long manicured nails and bright pink, heavily stickered bikes.
@post-and-out I believe this is relevant to your interests?
Helllllllllllllooooooooooooooooo
So of course I see the pictures and I’m like *_* but I’m also like “Can he dance tho?” because a man in a bellydance costume is a+ but a Male Bellydancer is basically that good shit meme with all the thumbs up emojis
My buddy read an article about octopus intelligence. It was feeding time, and the handler dumped some shrimp into an octopus’ tank. Then he went into another room and sat at his desk.
A while later, a shrimp was tossed onto his desk.
The octopus, upon finding one bad shrimp in the lot, had grabbed it, escaped its tank, crossed the hall, and threw the expired shrimp at its caretaker. Not only does this showcase their problem-solving capabilities, but also that it could have escaped at any time. It just broke out this time to chuck an off shrimp in indignation at its handler. That’s not just intelligence, that’s a human-like reaction. Kinda make you wonder exactly how smart these guys can be…
OH MY GOD
I went to the aquarium once and we had a tour and we walked past the octopus tank and it was duct taped shut so I asked why and the guy was like. “Well, we had a problem before because these fish were disappearing randomly at night and we had no idea why. Turns out the octopus had memorised the night guards rounds and would creep out of its tank, crawl across the floor to the fish tank, have a little snack and be back in its own tank with the lid shut before the guard came back.” they are super smart
I love octopuses so, so much.
@_@
I am both delighted and FUCKING TERRIFIED.
Once I went to the aquarium where they had a baby pacific red octopus in a tank. I had gone there to work on a few real life sketches, obviously I wanted to do one of an octopus. So I kinda just kneeled in front of the tank, and started sketching. The octopus didn’t mind, he sat happily. Then, 5 minutes later, he started moving to the front of the tank, where I was. This tiny octopus faces me directly and starts posing. I don’t know how other to explain it but he started curlung his tentacles in this really graceful way then wouldn’t move for a few minutes. Then again, a new pose. That tiny cute motherfucker knew I was drawing him.
Plume de Lynx 
