Re: Corydoras... Brackish book by Neale, canids/felids as pets/predators, the human exp. and the "rest" of the world    8/3/08
Hi Neale,
<Silvia,>
ANGFA people are a great bunch of people. I am not a fan of clubs and those sort of things but when I first met some of them I felt "at home". We all have the same thing in mind no matter what background. I met Bruce Hanson when he was still living in Brisbane before he moved north. Not only at the two-monthly meetings but also on our field trips. So, you wrote a book about brackish fish?
<Yes indeed. Funnily enough it grew out of ten years' worth of discussion between various fishkeepers on the Brackish Water Aquarium Mailing List, of which Bruce Hansen and Richard Mleczko are a couple of the subscribers (and co-authors) from Down Under.>
There doesn't seem to be much information around about this subject. At least when I thought about setting up a brackish tank years ago. It never got to it. People seem to decide for either freshwater or marine but not something in between. I find this environment very intriguing.
<It is an intriguing environment, and if you have access to estuaries and mangroves, quite an easy one to explore and collects small fish from (provided you can avoid the Salties). Both Bruce and Richard have a knack of making me feel incredibly jealous about Australian fishkeeping. I write for an Australian fish magazine, and one issue I have to deal with is the smaller selection of tropical species available to the average Australian hobbyist; but for the life of me I can't see why anyone would bother with Asian or South American standard tropicals like Neons and tiger barbs when they have access to native fish like rainbows, blue-eyes, Mouth Almighties, mudskippers, gudgeons, and all kinds of other brilliant fish.>
I agree totally about cats but people don't want to hear that their beloved cats are killers by instinct. They are, and they don't take only birds. Years ago we lived in a duplex and next door was vacant. Well, vacant with humans but occupied by a lovely blue-tongue lizard. I used to feed it with snails I found around my garden and yellow flowers. One day it went missing and a few days later I found it dead close by. The bite marks on his body pointed to a cat. It is sad and it makes me angry.
<One estimate puts the diversity of prey taken by Felis catus at about 1000 species, more than any other predator on earth. Their ability to catch animals on the ground, in trees, in the air, and even in shallow water is exceptional.>
I don't think that this is what Darwin meant with "struggle for life" or the rule of natural selection of the strongest since that doesn't apply anymore if there is an unnatural predator around.
<Hmm... well, the "struggle" between (say) house cats and garden birds is precisely what he meant. What has happened is that humans have made the struggle an unfair one. In "the wild" things usually operate in the favour of the prey species. They have millions of years to adapt to their predators through behaviour and physiology. So most of the time the gazelle can avoid the lion without undue difficulty, and such gazelles as are taken do little to affect the viability of the species as a whole. Indeed, Darwin would argue the effect is beneficial, by weeding out the sick and maladapted. What's happened with house cats is we've introduced them into places where the prey have no chance to adapt to them, and because we feed and provide healthcare to cats, we allow them to survive at much higher densities than would otherwise be possible. So the struggle is now biased in favour of the predator. End result, prey populations decline. In the natural world if the prey decline, the predators decline too, giving the prey a chance to recover (see the Snowshoe Hare/Canadian Lynx study) but because we look after the predator, the cat, it's populations stay high all the time, preventing such recovery.>
I think Darwin should be made compulsory reading at school.
<Very difficult to read. Tedious. Lack of statistics at the time he wrote meant he had to use literally hundreds of examples to drive his argument home by overwhelming any doubts the reader might have. 'Origin of Species' is one of the those books people own but rarely read. I certainly haven't, and I'm a BSc zoologist with a PhD in palaeontology. Nowadays would recommend easier reads such as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Fortey, and especially Steve Jones, author of the excellent 'Almost Like a Whale', expressly written as a modern 'Origin'.>
At least my cat is inside, so most of the wildlife is safe. I say most because we have geckos and skinks and spiders coming into the house and live here. Unfortunately some of them fall prey to the cat and the dog.
<If they come inside the house, that's not so bad: you don't really want animals to think of houses as safe places to forage, so a little "gene removal" like this will do no serious harm. In the long term animals that fully adapt to houses and suburban gardens can prosper, as is the case in England where you'll see things like foxes more commonly in towns than in the country!>
They sometimes team up for a little hunt, indoors that is. the dog only goes outside for a walk as she would do harm to the wildlife as well.
<Indeed. Dogs are predators on bigger animals than cats, and under most circumstances cause little harm when domesticated.>
If it comes to cat babies they are called kittens here as well but not with catfish. They are just baby catfish not kittens. My Cory kittens (I like this) just got company. The bristlenoses just hatched but they are still under dad's protection.
<Ancistrus make excellent fathers.>
Cheers
Silvia
<Cheers, Neale.>