Why aren’t fish more popular?

Ebirah766 said:
One could make this same exact argument for animas like birds, and small mammals, and herptiles. There are plenty of aquarium enthusiasts on this website as well. There are plenty of reasons to appreciate animals on their own levels, even ones that traditionally get the short of the stick. In my opinion, the way that Iniistus wrasses change radically throughout their lives is far more interesting than yet more primate group dynamics being discussed on Zoochat. Not trying to bash people who like popular animals, just making a case for aquatic animals.
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You're absolutely right. For the first part of my post I was merely saying that I, personally, am not as interested in fish. I think all of us are likely more interested in the animals we know the most about, and can appreciate at a more deeper level, and while I'm more knowledgeable about birds, reptiles, and some mammals, people who know more about fish or inverts are likely to find those groups more interesting. Others are certainly welcome to be fish enthusiasts, and all the more power to them, but personally I'm simply not interested in fish to the same degree I'm interested in those other animals.

There are certainly aquarium enthusiasts on here as well, I wasn't trying to say they aren't/can't be on this site, but just suggesting it's possible they are underrepresented because the site targets zoo enthusiasts, and not strictly aquarium enthusiasts. As such, the average member of the site likely joined due to an interest in traditional zoos, and not an interest in aquariums.
 
Neil chace said:
You're absolutely right. For the first part of my post I was merely saying that I, personally, am not as interested in fish. I think all of us are likely more interested in the animals we know the most about, and can appreciate at a more deeper level, and while I'm more knowledgeable about birds, reptiles, and some mammals, people who know more about fish or inverts are likely to find those groups more interesting. Others are certainly welcome to be fish enthusiasts, and all the more power to them, but personally I'm simply not interested in fish to the same degree I'm interested in those other animals.

There are certainly aquarium enthusiasts on here as well, I wasn't trying to say they aren't/can't be on this site, but just suggesting it's possible they are underrepresented because the site targets zoo enthusiasts, and not strictly aquarium enthusiasts. As such, the average member of the site likely joined due to an interest in traditional zoos, and not an interest in aquariums.
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Well said. I think all of us are interested in our own favorite types of animals.
 
BTW, I checked Zootierliste and currently in Europe, there are 3534 fish species / subspecies on display, versus 2245 birds and 1039 mammals and 1588 reptiles. So yes, there is a lot fish species, about as many as birds and mammals combined.

Out of curiosity, I also checked how many species have only one holder in Europe - 3127 of all vertebrates. So a zoo being the only one to keep some obscure animal is not difficult.

One interesting way to display fish are aquaria with a habitat in the land part. I especially like when the glass is just in the water section, and the upper part is open. It creates some better sense of reality of the fish. Not like a TV screen. And I never seen visitors trying to poke fingers in water.

I also like zoos which make an effort to show endangered freshwater fish and tell visitors about it. There are surprisingly many endangered freshwater fish, even extinct in the wild.
 
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birdsandbats said:
I don't know how you could ever visit there and think it's easy to keep track of everything.
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It is not terribly difficult, I've done it myself. Most the work was making the species list, and with the app out now, it is just a matter of IDing the species. Yes, you might have to leave out some species you see as unidentifiable or too similar to other species held in the same aquarium, but it is doable.
 
StoppableSan said:
The Aquarium at Pittsburgh Zoo's a good way of creating "dynamic" tanks - presentation's the most important part as far as displaying any species. A gallery of reptiles isn't going to be nearly as exciting as a dome with displays that extend into the visitor path, bird houses with walk-through aviaries are quite popular, etc. Fish are amazing creatures, and while I personally love WCS/National Aquarium style galleries, I also love stuff in the same vein as Pittsburgh Zoo's Aquarium.
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But they sign like 5 species
 
TinoPup said:
I think this is largely due to their relatively short lifespan,
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Short lifespan isn't necessarily as much of a factor as people might think. Many reef species such as clownfish, angelfishes, and puffers are routinely documented living into their late teens and even their 20's under good care. The same holds true for many larger freshwater species such as cichlids, non-fancy goldfish, and armored catfish. It is entirely not unreasonable for the majority of the larger popular aquarium species to live over a decade.

Jurek7 said:
I also like zoos which make an effort to show endangered freshwater fish and tell visitors about it. There are surprisingly many endangered freshwater fish, even extinct in the wild.
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Including many popular species both in the private trade and public aquarium. You can buy a Red-tail Black Shark for $6 but nobody tells you it's virtually extinct in the wild...
 
Great Argus said:
You can buy a Red-tail Black Shark for $6 but nobody tells you it's virtually extinct in the wild...
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What? Why? Six dollars??? That cannot possibly be good for anybody (including the shark)!

But yeah, I think a lot of the unpopularity of fish, here at least, is that aquarium enthusiasts/hobbyists are not abundant here.
 
ifesbob said:
What? Why? Six dollars??? That cannot possibly be good for anybody (including the shark)!
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It's not an actual shark, I'm talking about the cyprinid Epalzeorhynchos bicolor.
full

Credit to @WhistlingKite24

Actual sharks are much more expensive typically and not quite so easy to come by.
 
Neil chace said:
Furthermore, on this site I suspect you see more interest in other animals because it's called "ZooChat" not "AquariumChat". A lot of people join because of an interest in traditional zoos, not aquariums. Not to say aquarium enthusiasts don't have a place here, just that they aren't as numerous as bird, mammal, and reptile enthusiasts.
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This just shows your own ignorance, aquariums are a type of zoos and especially in West/Central Europe most major zoos will have an aquarium on site. This comment is the same as saying, this is not reptile housechat, but zoochat.... It is a pity for you Americans that not more zoos have on site aquaria.

In fact for many zoos that have an aquarium on site, it is often among the most popular attractions. It is a bit of a paradox that individual fish species are often overlooked and not very popular, fish from finding nemo excluded, but that aquarium displays itself are immensely popular. It might be because an attractive aquarium often hosts 10-50 species in a landscaped tank and people are generally unfamiliar with types of fish anyway. The drawing card is simply the glimpse of an exotic otherwise invisible world.

The difficult part with fish is that there is a steeper learning curve to learn them, compared to mammals/birds. Even small kids will know the difference between a dog and a cat (2 families), but practically none will be able to distinguish between a parrotfish and a fusilier. So there is a backlog anyway and there are just so many fish, >30.000 compared to 6000 mammals of which the vast majority are little brown jobs, that most people will either call mouse, rat, bat or shrew. Add to that less easily available literature to give a good overview and no surprise, fish identification is down to specialists in many not so obvious cases. But as @Sicarius said, it is possible to get your head around it, once you know the basic groups of fish that are relatively often kept and after visiting a few different aquaria, you'll get a grip on the basic diversity and the most common species.
 
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Unfortunately(?) I'm one of those people who don't really have an interest in individual fish species. I did go to a few aquarium though, most notably in Japan, which honestly may give me so many more unique and underrepresented species in other similar facilities.
Honestly, a lot of time I go to aquarium I'm looking at the "wow" factor, like Georgia's Ocean Voyager will be a good example for you. I don't really get into IDing every single species in every single small tank, I mostly just glance through them. Of course, if there are species which stood out (mostly in appearance) for me I would have a better look, say flying gurnard or wolffish would be some good example. Otherwise, for me every species of tetra looks a bit too similar to appreciate them one by one.
And also, everyone know there are megafauna bias in zoos, and it applies to aquarium as well. Maybe it's just there are more small fish in an aquarium than big one, so they just grab your attention much easier.
 
A big problem is that people grow up with a bit of a taxonomic insight into wildlife, but it is limited to mammals, birds & reptiles. Children learn to differentiate lemurs, monkeys and apes from each other while nobody teaches them what a wrasse is. So adolescents and adults have a good basic set of ID skills regarding other, mostly the bigger, animals. Once reached adulthood and finding yourself interested in zoos, starting to dig into the complex taxonomic network of fish seems too much work. Many people here do not have any clue where to start, since they were raised with a focus on big cats or the difference between a flamingo and a pelican. That's why they easily give up on collecting fish. I'm sure that the public would be more focused on individual fish species if they were taught the basic taxonomic orders as a child. We should normalise teaching the next generation about any kind of animal, not only the popular ones that everybody likes.
 
From my perspective I grew up in a house full of tanks and fish encyclopedias, so when I was two I could already say “Pelvicachromis pulcher.” If it weren’t for my family being aquarium hobbyists I probably wouldn’t be this into fish.

It seems like as with learning foreign languages, starting in infancy is pretty important.
 
In regards to fish popularity among laymen: yesterday I visited the National Zoo with a friend of mine who is not an animal enthusiast. Surprisingly, his favorite part of the zoo was not the elephants, or the big cats, or even the pandas. Instead, we both felt that one of the biggest highlights of our visit was Amazonia, with the tank of Arapaima and Pacu being particularly engaging to watch. I think these fish’s huge size, unusual morphology, and high activity levels all contributed to their popularity (plus the way they were presented within the strong rainforest complex).
 
I wish I could've spent more time in front of every tank I've visited in my life, unfortunately the only way to know what was in the tanks was to look at signs which, as stated multiple times, can be inaccurate or incomplete, due to every visit to any zoo being a slow-paced casual stop with my family, and since my father and my brother are not the most fond on (live) zoological exhibitions, I could not spend much time at most "inferior" species in my life.
RatioTile said:
From my perspective I grew up in a house full of tanks and fish encyclopedias, so when I was two I could already say “Pelvicachromis pulcher.” If it weren’t for my family being aquarium hobbyists I probably wouldn’t be this into fish.
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Do you exchange fishes like Pokémons with them?:D
 
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