Bonus: A Troubling of Goldfish

[00:00:02] This is BewilderBeasts, an infotainment show dedicated to inspiring curiosity for all ages

[00:00:13] by investigating the ways animals intersect at humanity.

[00:00:17] I am not a historian, an ethologist, a researcher, a scientist, a zoologist, a trained audio

[00:00:23] engineer or an expert in… well, anything.

[00:00:26] Y'all, I'm lucky if I can remember to put my clean laundry in the dryer before

[00:00:30] it gets funky.

[00:00:31] And while I make every effort to present things as accurately as I can with a fun flair, I'm

[00:00:36] going to mess up.

[00:00:37] And that's okay.

[00:00:38] I hope I've given you a nice place to jump off from on your own adventures into curiosity.

[00:00:42] Or at the very least, I've given you the key to win your next round of trivia.

[00:00:46] Hello and welcome to BewilderBeasts.

[00:01:10] I'm your host Melissa Mickey McGrath.

[00:01:12] Today we're talking lakes, lobster races and a collective noun called a trouble.

[00:01:17] It's fine!

[00:01:18] Alright let's go!

[00:01:32] Sinovabber y'all!

[00:01:34] It's a bit chilly so I thought I'd bring y'all lakeside to think about warmer days,

[00:01:38] nicer climates if you're in the Northern Hemisphere.

[00:01:40] And while it might not be exactly the lake you're thinking of, just know…

[00:01:46] I tried.

[00:01:47] Alright, let's do this thing.

[00:01:57] Yo, did you hear about this?

[00:01:59] A week ago, a man caught a 67 pound goldfish in a lake.

[00:02:05] 67 pounds!

[00:02:07] That's as much as my fifth-grader ways.

[00:02:09] A goldfish y'all, a goldfish.

[00:02:12] That is too big for a goldfish.

[00:02:16] Evidently, this orange koi slash carp cross was released into a lake over 20 years

[00:02:22] ago.

[00:02:24] So this fish is also the equivalent of a sophomore in college.

[00:02:27] And that's only midlife for some goldfish.

[00:02:30] There are some goldfish on record being 45 years old.

[00:02:34] They remember the 70s y'all, and no one remembers the 70s.

[00:02:40] This does not mimic the experience that I had with goldfish.

[00:02:43] Truly, our goldfish, when I was a kiddo, were not quite so lucky to live to 45 months

[00:02:50] old.

[00:02:51] We had goldfish before we knew things like water bubblers were important, or how

[00:02:55] to clean a fish tank without killing the fish when you put them back in the tank,

[00:02:59] or in this case it was a bowl because hey the 80s.

[00:03:02] I felt bad that my goldfish didn't have enough space to grow and be a good fish.

[00:03:06] Plus, I was a kid and I thought it was lonely so I gave it to my friend who had a tropical

[00:03:10] aquarium.

[00:03:11] The parents thought that the goldfish would die.

[00:03:13] I thought the goldfish would die.

[00:03:15] She for sure as the aquarium expert in the third grade thought the goldfish would

[00:03:18] die but it survived.

[00:03:20] And not only that, Goldie thrived in this aquarium.

[00:03:25] If I recall, it was the fish that made it the longest of all of the fish in this

[00:03:29] tropical tank and it was the last to go into the big old fish bowl in the sky.

[00:03:36] And how is this possible?

[00:03:37] Well, goldfish we see in tanks have a few features.

[00:03:42] The first is when you see a goldfish in a bowl, you want to make sure that you

[00:03:44] have a big enough tank for it, not the little bowl without any stimulation that's

[00:03:48] boring and cruel.

[00:03:50] Goldfish actually need room to swim and to spread their fins but goldfish have a

[00:03:54] nasty little feature of growing and growing and continuing to grow to fit their container.

[00:04:01] And as you see from earlier, the goldfish can also live a really long time.

[00:04:06] 25 years is not unheard of.

[00:04:08] In fact, when we think goldfish, we often don't think longevity, at least in my

[00:04:13] personal experience.

[00:04:14] But if you are a parent, you may think easily replaceable in case of emergency

[00:04:19] leading to the 21 flush salute.

[00:04:21] In captivity, this might be true.

[00:04:24] Goldfish don't do as well in our homes and that might be because we just shove

[00:04:27] them into a boring bowl without room for movement or they're suffering from boredom,

[00:04:33] poor diet, poor air circulation, poor temperature regulation, any number of things

[00:04:37] that can go wrong with many pet fish all over the world.

[00:04:40] But in the wild?

[00:04:41] Oh y'all, they thrive.

[00:04:44] Carrot, the name of said fifth-grader sized goldfish in France, is only one

[00:04:50] example of this phenomenon.

[00:04:52] Carrot was released back into the pond for other anglers to try to catch, which it

[00:04:57] turns out is both easy and very, very hard.

[00:05:01] Not many people have caught this big boy koi, but he is easy to spot in the lake.

[00:05:06] It's pretty hard to miss, honestly, a 67 pound four foot basketball orange,

[00:05:10] whoa ugly fish.

[00:05:11] You know when you look in the water and you have to work hard to see a fish?

[00:05:16] Not this one.

[00:05:17] He's pretty easy to spot.

[00:05:20] But it turns out he's very difficult to catch.

[00:05:22] So Carrot was caught and because no one feels good about filleting a goldfish, he was released

[00:05:28] back into the lake for other anglers to enjoy the glee that comes with catching

[00:05:32] a childhood fish but a mega chunky boy-sized fish.

[00:05:37] So when you look up online, the largest goldfish ever, there are many in England,

[00:05:43] it turns out.

[00:05:44] What often happens is people get cute little goldfish whether they win them at the fair

[00:05:48] or they talk mommy and daddy into buying them a fish that they promise they'll take

[00:05:51] care of and take it for not walks.

[00:05:53] And then people either get sick of feeding them or in the case of my sister and I deciding

[00:05:58] we were going to save the lobsters in the refrigerator from my mom's dinner by first

[00:06:02] cutting off their little rubber band clothings, then having a quick race in the grass to

[00:06:07] see whose was fastest, the answer turns out was neither, they just stood there snapping

[00:06:11] their claws in the air.

[00:06:13] We couldn't really catch them again because they were lobsters and trying to snap at

[00:06:17] us before our big plan of releasing them into the lake behind our house so they could

[00:06:22] be saved.

[00:06:26] Luckily for the lobsters, well maybe I guess how lucky depends on how you look at it,

[00:06:30] they didn't really get saved by going into the lake.

[00:06:33] It was the 80s so when my mom came home to her unattended children, which was

[00:06:36] totally normal, making a ruckus in the backyard trying to make our new fugitive bottom

[00:06:40] feeders race, she somehow managed to collect them and yes, eat them.

[00:06:46] But lucky I guess because had they got to the lake, we would have for sure killed them

[00:06:50] because saltwater lobster in freshwater lakes do not survive.

[00:06:58] And I can totally see kids doing this to try to help their goldfish, truly I've

[00:07:02] been there, but they are invasive and they are wreaking havoc in many lakes including

[00:07:09] Lake Tahoe.

[00:07:11] The scupas researchers are all up in that lake looking for invasive species and came

[00:07:15] face to face with 15 goldfish, growing, invasive, glubbing goldfish.

[00:07:21] But they were massively huge and schooling.

[00:07:25] And to make matters worse, they are very capable of making goldfish babies.

[00:07:29] They are also destroying the Tahoe ecosystem.

[00:07:34] So if you are considering dumping your goldfish into that lake, I would think

[00:07:37] twice, not just for protecting the environment because that's really why we're here,

[00:07:42] but because you could also be slapped with a $5,000 fine for dumping your pet fish into

[00:07:49] a lake.

[00:07:51] That is significantly higher than Elon Musk is charging for a blue checkmark on Twitter

[00:07:55] and perhaps this is why the collective noun for goldfish isn't just school, but a

[00:08:00] troubling.

[00:08:01] There is a certifiable troubling of goldfish in lakes all around the world.

[00:08:07] So the wildest thing about these goldfish and all the other goldfish is that they

[00:08:11] can go five months without oxygen.

[00:08:15] Five months!

[00:08:16] I know!

[00:08:17] Bunkers, right?

[00:08:19] So here's what happens.

[00:08:20] Unlike humans who need oxygen to breathe every few seconds, goldfish did not evolve

[00:08:25] to live in a bowl or in a dusty windowsill.

[00:08:28] They come from ponds and these ponds freeze over in the winter.

[00:08:33] And once that happens, there are lower levels of oxygen in the water.

[00:08:37] And then the goldfish have to move to a different process to be able to survive

[00:08:40] underwater.

[00:08:41] They switch processes so instead of breathing through their gills, they convert carbohydrates

[00:08:46] into alcohol which they release through their gills.

[00:08:49] And I'm not entirely sure how this helps them breathe.

[00:08:53] My guess is that when they eat the carbohydrates or process the carbohydrates, their system

[00:08:59] ends up burning off alcohol and shooting that into the water in the same way that

[00:09:03] we breathe out carbon dioxide when we breathe in air.

[00:09:07] When they're eating the carbohydrates, that might be giving off an oxygen molecule for

[00:09:11] them to be able to survive off of?

[00:09:14] I have no idea if that's accurate so biologists who understand fish science please

[00:09:18] hit me up.

[00:09:19] I want to make sure I get this right and I'm not convinced I did.

[00:09:24] But the ability to breathe without oxygen and a really fast reproductive baby turnaround

[00:09:30] time means that these fish who do terribly in fish bowls around the world absolutely

[00:09:36] when they are living in lakes and ponds and streams.

[00:09:39] And what self-respecting creature is going to gobble up a 67 pound goldfish?

[00:09:43] Even a snapping turtle is like, um, I'm out.

[00:09:49] But this means that native species end up getting totally hosed by goldfish.

[00:09:55] How bad is the problem really?

[00:09:58] Well Carver County in Minnesota had to remove 50,000 goldfish in the year that

[00:10:04] brought us the greatest hits like COVID-19, toilet paper shortages and murder hornets.

[00:10:09] Yeah baby, 2020.

[00:10:11] These poor waterway managers probably did not have remove 50,000 goldfish from the

[00:10:17] county lakes on their bingo card.

[00:10:19] But then again, by November 2020, I'm pretty sure nothing was surprising to anyone

[00:10:24] anymore.

[00:10:25] Other towns that have had to gold mine for goldfish, Alberta, Canada has had to

[00:10:30] deal with these rogue survivors.

[00:10:31] And Spokane Washington's local government dedicated $150,000 to liberate a local lake

[00:10:40] from its own troubling of goldfish.

[00:10:44] Literally thousands of goldfish were destroying that lakes ecology.

[00:10:48] And that's something we don't really think about when we're trying to save

[00:10:52] a pet fish.

[00:10:55] So goldfish are super great in cheesy cracker form.

[00:10:58] For home aquariums, if you do your homework and keep in mind they are not the cleanest

[00:11:02] fish.

[00:11:03] And absolutely terrible for lake Tahoe and other bodies of water.

[00:11:08] But if you are patient enough, you can teach your goldfish how to do cool things

[00:11:12] like tricks.

[00:11:13] Like eat out of your hand and jump through hoops.

[00:11:16] Just Google goldfish tricks today and you will see basic target training skills

[00:11:20] that I use in dog training to teach animals a variety of fun party tricks.

[00:11:26] And one goldfish has even been able to use target training to drive a car.

[00:11:31] Well, not really a car.

[00:11:33] It's more like an aquarium on wheels, on land.

[00:11:37] But a car sounds way better in the headlines.

[00:11:40] So this goldfish could bump his nose into the side of a tank which would move the

[00:11:44] aquarium on wheels a little bit forward.

[00:11:47] And if the fish wanted a treat, it would drive the aquarium to a spot on the wall

[00:11:51] that had a pink dot on it.

[00:11:53] And once they targeted the aquarium just right, they would get fish treats.

[00:11:59] Pretty cool, right?

[00:12:00] And if the fish didn't want to move anywhere, it could just face the middle of

[00:12:03] the tank and the aquarium would stop.

[00:12:06] The fish had complete autonomy and was able to turn, go, and put on the

[00:12:10] brakes.

[00:12:11] It's kind of like a student driver.

[00:12:13] But without the jaded biology teacher and the foot brake in the passenger seat

[00:12:16] telling you to look out for the curb or look out for the speed limit or look

[00:12:21] out for that mailbox, Melissa, I'm fine.

[00:12:24] I'm a great driver.

[00:12:26] My hope is that instead of the Amazon drones and the food delivery folk this

[00:12:30] Christmas season, we have a fish army of all of these goldfish retrieved from

[00:12:34] bodies of water being put to work driving little aquaria cars door to

[00:12:38] door delivering leggings and Legos and, oh, well, hopefully not fish

[00:12:45] tacos.

[00:12:54] So thank you for listening to this month's Patreon exclusive.

[00:12:58] I got today's information from LiveScience.com, Largest.org,

[00:13:02] WashingtonPost.com, KHQ.com and SmithsonianMag.com on the driving

[00:13:10] goldfish.

[00:13:11] Intro and outro music is Diptoe Out the Back by Dan Leibowitz and

[00:13:15] interstitial music is by MK2.

[00:13:17] Additional music and effects is by Pixivay and Freesound.org.

[00:13:21] And funny enough, I was actually looking up drunk elephant stories and

[00:13:26] it took a weird turn and ended up in giant goldfish territory.

[00:13:29] So tell me you have ADHD without telling me that you have ADHD.

[00:13:34] I sincerely hope that you are able to find peace this hectic holiday season.

[00:13:39] And if you need to take a break from all of the things, just do it.

[00:13:43] It's important to step back, take a breather and set boundaries if you

[00:13:46] need them.

[00:13:47] And I hope that you are going to have the best holiday season ever.

[00:13:53] Just don't get anyone a pet goldfish for Christmas and I think you'll be all

[00:13:56] set.

[00:13:57] So that's it, stay curious and I will see y'all for December's episode.

[00:14:02] Mwah!

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