© Murdoch University
Pet Goldfish Dumped In Lakes Are Growing Into Monsters
Trending News: This Is Why You Shouldn't Release Goldfish Into The Wild
Why Is This Important?
Because you may have flushed away a fierce predator.
Long Story Short
Researchers in Australia have found that discarded goldfish are growing into four-pound monsters that are terrorizing local ecosystems and can travel for much greater distances than expected.
Remember that time you won a goldfish at the fair and flushed it down the toilet? Well now it’s all grown up and has a serious chip on its shoulder…
Researchers in Australia have been studying what happens when goldfish are introduced into water ecosystems and have found that they can transform from sweet little fish into serious badasses.
Scientists found that goldfish can grow to 10 times their original size - roughly the size of a football - and reach the fearsome weight of four pounds.
A picture posted on the ABC News Perth Twitter feed shows a massive goldfish that looks like a scary, blown-up version of the goldfish you would bring home in a bag from a fair.
“Perhaps they were kids’ pets where the family have been moving house and their parents, not wanting to take them to the aquarium, have dumped them in the local wetlands. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand that wetlands connect up to river systems and introduced fish can do a lot of damage to native freshwater fish and the aquatic habitat,” lead researcher Stephen Beatty of Murdoch University in Perth told ABC News
A population surge of goldfish, technically known as Carassius auratus, in the Vasse River region of Southwest Australia has had a big effect on the other local fish, especially because the goldfish are carnivorous, cruising around and causing chaos.
When scientists tagged 15 wild goldfish in the Vasse River near Busselton and tracked them for 12 months they found they were bullying other fish and traveling a lot further than had previously been assumed possible, around 230km in a year.
The big problem is that the goldfish populations can get out of hand and they can effectively take over the waterways, outmuscling the usual inhabitants, like a sort of fishy Mafia.
The next time you see a goldfish in a tank you might want to give it a bit more respect because one of these bad boys in the wild suddenly doesn’t look quite so cute.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question
Have you ever flushed a goldfish down the toilet?
Disrupt Your Feed
We’d better hope that goldfish have short memories because you don’t want your abandoned fair goldfish coming back for vengeance…
Drop This Fact
In Boulder County, Colorado around 4,000 goldfish were discovered in one lake. The infestation was traced back to one person dumping a handful of goldfish into a nearby waterway.