``Whee!'' yelled the little fishes, ``Here's a lot of fun''

[austin_dern]

You may have heard that bunny_hugger and I have a pond in the backyard. It's a good-sized one, just big enough to bloom with sheets of algae large enough to propel an aircraft carrier by sail. (I'm really, truly impressed by how much matter algae can make out of water, air, and light.) Ever since a devastating raccoon attack several years ago the pond's been without fish, though. bunny_hugger's wanted to get some new fish, and saw a Craigslist advertisement for some from not far away.

So that's how we got ... probably not more than a dozen goldfish of various stripes. We embarrassingly forgot to take photographs or count them when they were in the white bucket used to transport them, so we've had to do our best to estimate the number when they're in the actual water. This has several hazards, among them, that there's plants they can hide behind and that at least one of them is a very dark, brown fish that blends in nearly perfectly with the background. I actually think there are two like this, because I'm pretty sure I have seen their outlines against the brighter orange fish, but bunny_hugger hasn't caught sight of them, at least as of this writing.

The fish spent their first couple days huddled together at the bottom of the pond, typical frightened behavior (I'm told) and quite reasonable considering they'd always been aquarium fish and now were out in the open in a much larger enclosure than they've ever had and in something fairly close to natural circumstances. Over the first couple days they started exploring more and more of the pond, and by last week they'd even got comfortable enough to come up to the surface of the water, at least when we're not around.

bunny_hugger also picked up some food pellets, not because they need more food --- they've got enough algae and bugs to keep them busy for life --- but so that they'll have some reason to come see us. The pellets initially left the fish baffled, and believe me when I say you haven't seen baffled until you've seen goldfish staring at you for tossing ... things ... at them, but some of the smaller ones came up and after a few tries even successfully ate one. Within a week they were starting to get less terrified of the food and to the point where they'd understand it was there for the eating with just a minute or so to think about it.

Trivia: In October 1938 the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission received federal financing --- $29.25 million from the Public works Administration and nearly $41 million in revenue bonds from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation --- to build the Pennsylvania Turnpike; terms of the financing required that most of the work be completed by the end of May 1940. Source: The Big Roads: The Untold Story Of The Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created The American Superhighways, Earl Swift.

Currently Reading: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/June 2013, Editor Gordon van Gelder.

PS: My June 2013 Statistics for the mathematics blog, since apparently some people find those things interesting, and while I'm at it the parallel data for my humor blog, again, surprisingly popular considering how much there isn't in it.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

If you want to estimate the fish count right now, it's pretty easy! Just catch 10 of them, and tag them in some way. Then the next day, catch 10 more, and see how many of them are tagged already. From there you can estimate the population size using MATH.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, I did consider that, but was stuck on how to tag them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

Sharpie?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

This seems to be bringing us dangerously close to fish tattooing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

Also people tend to underestimate the intelligence of goldfish. In grad school I had a friend with a large fish pond, AND her property tended to be the stomping ground for all the neighborhood cats (both wandering pets and strays). Her fish did quite well; all the stupid ones were quickly weeded out, and all the smart ones bred, and they had a hobby of trolling the cats by staying near the surface, wiggling provocatively, and then diving down just as a cat was lunging at it. Wet cats, happy fish.

They were also quite happy to be petted and touched by humans. The fish, I mean. The cats not so much.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

People most certainly underestimate the intelligence of goldfish, and probably all fish. I would go so far as to say people underestimate the intelligence of nearly all animals except their own pets.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Goldfish probably have it the worst, since that ``three-second memory'' idea got lodged in the popular consciousness. I hope that one fades soon, although the longevity of the one about humans using a tenth of their brains doesn't bode well for this.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm a touch surprised to have fish happy being petted by humans, although there's all sorts of personality types out there. I think the only really marine creatures I've petted have been dolphins and a shark on exhibit at an undersea show striving for a bit of scientific respectability. (I admit I'm mostly content to let animals be to themselves and wait for them to show hints that they want to deal with me first.)