Loaches Online Forum

Does that mean that Upside-down catfish are naturally calm fish?

Martin.

mistergreen wrote:you know how you can hypnotize a lizard or an alligator by flipping it upside down and rubbing its belly? I wonder if you can do that to a fish too.

Same goes for chickens and particually violent roosters.....

lol animals are silly. And yeah I remember reading about that tank explosion, that must have been terrible all around

Don't think that would work on Lewellyn OR Tanooki- they both enjoy eating upside down, or at least rooting around for their food upside down.
How does the poor shark right itself after it's been turned upside down? I feel sorry for sharks. They get treated pretty awful. Does anyone else here know how they get the fins for shark fin soup?

The tank explosion was insanity. I was in res at the time, too. Imagine that! The Tanooki I have now is not ACTUALLY the real Tanooki... I just pretended it was. Poor Hokey- he travelled pretty far looking for more water. He went across the res room, under the door, across the porch and almost made it under the outside door- he dried up there.

for upside down catfish, just flip them right side up to hypnotize them ... ha.
their brains have adapted to be upside down. what evolutionary advantage that has, i have no idea. hard to imagine.

they usually kill the shark to get at the fins. It doesn't taste like anything in particular but it's all about the gelatinous texture. Same thing for jellyfish... Feels like you're eating rubberband. it's kinda cool.

oh, after 30 minutes of being hypnotized, the animal usually snaps out of it and go on their merry way. I have a feeling somehow being upsidedown trigger the part of the brain that makes them feel like they're a fetus again and inside an egg. Kinda like how you can grab a cat by the gruff?sp on their neck and it would trigger them immobile.

Awwww that's sad about poor Hokey I hate it when fish die and it's not yet their time...

As for shark fin soup, I've heard numerous times that the sharks are indeed thrown back into the water alive but with their fins cut off. It's really sick. The humane thing would be to use the whole shark since people eat shark meat too. Instead they are left to die painfully. It's a terrible waste all around for people who work like that. I'd shoot the buggers who did things like that on sight.