Loaches Online Forum

I have read in a couple of places that dojo loaches are either completely blind, or can only see light and dark. Is that really true? Because I could swear my Lenny likes to bait my cat when the cat is watching "Fish TV", by swimming up and down one corner of the tank.

Most loaches have pretty good eyesight in my experience. Dojos use their barbels for sensing food and their surroundings, but not as a substitute for vision.

I would be interested to know where you read that.

Martin.

Could you post us a link to those places you've read this? I haven't heard of such, myself.
Heard of blind cave loaches, but not dojos.

I've said a few times that I don't think dojos' vision is actually very useful to them. They don't find food by sight, even when it's very very obvious (or at least mine don't), nor to they seem to react in any way to visual stimuli, although they very obviously react to scent.

howver; their eyes look "functional". I can't think of a species of anything, offhand, that has not-rudimentary eyes but is blind, apart from in an occasional example. However, it wouldn't be that unusual to find an animal with very poor vision. Dojos are often quoted as living in "muddy puddles" - not an environment where vision would be a particularly important sense, I imagine.

but yeah, mine don't seem to use their vision in any particularly noticeable way.

Hrmm... I've looked at the few websites I have bookmarked and it isn't on them, just in a few old forums I read when I did research on them around Christmas.

Never mind me

Yeah, I've heard this rumor as well, quite often.
Apparently, as the story goes, weather loaches come from an environment where burrowing in the mud is a specialty of theirs- they don't need to rely on their sight so much, due to their speedy burrowing/camoflage abilities. Something like that, anyway.
Now where did I see that...

I'm sure i seen something a while ago on a Japanese Koi web-site. Someone stated that they have poor eye-sight.

Google time.