Postal Gold’s Favourite Swimmer
We at Postal Gold are passionate about all subjects related to gold, so it’s no wonder that the elegant and exotic-looking goldfish is one of our favourite animals. It can be argued that they are more orange than gold… But who cares! They still make for amazing eye candy.
A Brief History
The goldfish was one of the earliest fish to be domesticated, and owes its orange-reddish hue to genetic mutations enhanced by years of breeding. It is a member of the carp family, and it descends from (and is a sub-species of) the gibel carp, Carassius auratus, which inhabits waters in southeast Asia and can grow up to 30 cm in length. The gibel carp is a less colourful version of the goldfish, usually silvery-white, but it varies in colour depending on the environment it is raised in. Fish of this species are pale in dimly lit waters, but brighter when they are raised in bright surroundings with lots of light.
Image by perpetualplum
Raising goldfish in captivity became popular during the Tang dynasty in China (618-907 AD). A natural genetic mutation caused some of the carp to assume a yellow-orange rather than silver colour, and they began to be bred in order to produce the common goldfish with its distinctive colouration. Some of the carp developed a yellow hue, but yellow was considered to be an imperial colour, and non-royals were forbidden to keep fish of this colour. This is why goldfish today are more often orange than yellow, although yellow goldfish are easier to breed.
Goldfish were first raised in ponds, but later on, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD), they were raised indoors, where it became possible to breed other types of goldfish than the common goldfish. This has led to the many different types of goldfish that exist today.
Image by úlfhams víkingur
Did You Know?
Postal Gold brings you four interesting facts about goldfish:
- When goldfish are left in the dark for a long time, they lose all colour and turn gray. Their bright colour is due to a light-sensitive pigment similar to melanin, the pigment that tans our skin when we are exposed to the sun.
- Everyone has heard the phrase “memory like a goldfish”, coined from the belief that goldfish have a memory span of three seconds. But this was disproved by Mythbusters, the Discovery Channel show that proved that goldfish have at least a three-month memory span, deduced from experiments that involved training goldfish to memorise the correct path out of a maze.
- Goldfish produce large amounts of waste from their excrement and their gills – for this reason, it’s important that they have a lot of space to move around and aquatic plants to clean their water. The typical ‘goldfish bowl’ makes a poor home for these beautiful swimmers.
- Goldfish often learn to recognise the people that feed them. Due to their good eyesight and hearing they can differentiate between individual people. Many owners of goldfish attest that their fish may shy away from strangers, but will swim towards their owners, eagerly waiting to be fed.
We hope that this article has piqued your interest in goldfish. If Postal Gold had a totem animal, it would probably be a goldfish. Or perhaps a golden scarab beetle… Or a golden lion tamarind… But those are subjects for another post!
