The New York Times is running an article online about extravagant fish tanks: $200,000 tanks with $1000 monthly maintenance fees. What I find particularly jaw dropping about the story isn’t the cost of the homeowner’s decor, it’s the fact that the homeowners consider fish decor in the first place.
Fish are animals. They do not belong in little glass boxes and they do not exist to decorate your room or to amuse you. They are living creatures. And seriously, before I get a bunch of hate comments (I’m not changing my mind) yes, yes it is different from having a cat or a dog, both of which are allowed outside to roam and coexist in a mutually beneficial relationship of companionship with their care givers. I do not own a cat so that my living room looks prettier. In fact, my cats make my space look much worse, but I love them more than my things so I manage.
(sorry for the long disclaimer, I just really don’t want to fend off hate comments today.)
The designers interviewed in the article note that aquariums answer the age old questions: “How do you humanize this space, how do you introduce natural elements? How do you make it feel like you’re not standing in a white, pristine, soul-less box?”
8 fish swimming endlessly around 2 rocks doesn’t feel soulful to me. Fail.
The owners of this 6,000 pound, $200,000 suspended tank “get lost in it” at night rather than the television set. I’m so so glad that nature’s creatures are able to provide you with endless entertainment.
It is noted that the owner’s of this tank’s other point of pride in their home is the tanning bed in the basement. Need I say more?
Ok, really, I’m sure there are lots of people who will disagree with me today. I’m sure several of you have aquariums and love your fishies and I’m sure you make great homes for them. And, no, they are not being hunted and eaten. I know there are several sides to the fish-in-home debate, and I could probably be persuaded to accept several of the gray areas, but the bottom line is that fish as decor creeps me out. Please try not to get too hatey today. Besides, this whole look is really 80s, and not in a good way. xoxo
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I definitely agree with you when it comes to tropical fish, breeds that are living in the wild.
I’m not well versed in fish, so I don’t know if fish like goldfish exist in the wild. I realize that at some point, someone caught one and brought it inside, but are still out there, thriving in the wild? Regardless, I have a feeling the people with those massive, tacky aquariums aren’t interested in goldfish. They probably want rare, wild caught, and expensive fish to entertain them.
i hear you…and the look is totally 80′s so no-no number two also.
Jeannine, you know, I don’t know about the goldfish either, I think this is one of those gray areas I could probably be persuaded to be ok with
At the risk of being silly, “fish are friends, not food”. I won’t even eat them.
they just remind me of the live lobster tanks in grocery stores.
ew.
(my son won two goldfish at a fair in april….miraculously they are still alive. i think they’re just grateful to be here and not traveling with carnies anymore.)
Interesting post. I’m on the other side of the fence. I really want to get a dog, but can’t decide what colour would match my couch?
I was considering getting fish and wanted to put them in a cut crystal bowl. I decided against it, apparently goldfish get disoriented by the facets. I might be tacky and shallow, but I’m not cruel.
Pieter, you may be tacky and shallow, but you are also hilarious.
I couldn’t agree with you more… I feel the same about fish in tanks as I do about birds in cages, so not cool. I have cats too but they’re not decor, they’re part of the family
I completely agree with you on all counts! I love how you made sure we knew about the tanning bed. You are right; that says all we need to know.
Hahahaaaaa, Pieter!!!
I can’t stand fish tanks because they are T.A.C.K.Y.
Yes! Totally and completely, all of it, 100%. Yes. Yes.
And good for you for having the guts to say it, too. I’m kind of gun-shy when it comes to posting this kind of stuff (mostly fear of being accused of hypocrisy, I guess), but really…I shouldn’t be.
Thank you.
I’m so glad you dudes were feeling my flavor today! Love to all of you!
Just found your blog today & so glad I did! Having so much fun catching up & I am so with you on the whole fish tank thing…mostly, because I just feel sorry for them(the fish, I mean)
xo
Melis
Even though I have a fish art fetish, I do concur. Something just wrong with watching fancy fish swimming in small circles.
I also have issue with caged birds. That just aint right.
I agree with Raina that fish tanks are tacky.
And this isn’t a hate comment, I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m trying to tell the other side to the story.
That said, not all living things are created equal. There’s certainly a difference between keeping a fish in a tank and a dog in a crate, for example. And having said that, I know several people who keep their dogs in crates all day at work, while I don’t think they’re “wrong”, I think it’s a lot “more wrong” to have a dog in a crate for 8 hours than a fish in a tank for 24.
Fish have extremely simple nervous systems. Your concepts of “boredom” and “frustration” are easy to identify with and project to a fish, and indeed, are probably present in some more primitive level for dogs and cats, but it’s almost certainly not true. The fish probably doesn’t “think” or know they’re even in a cage. They aren’t self aware.
Now, speaking of self aware, pigs are. Pigs are one of the very few animals out there who have any concept of “self” (dogs and cats don’t btw). And we eat them. Not because we have to, but because they’re delicious.
So, is keeping fish in a tank the most humane thing in the world? Not really, but I put it at orders of magnitude higher up on the “moral” scale than eating a self aware, very intelligent, animals just because it’s bacon is delicious.
And if you don’t eat pigs or agree with crating animals, then none of this applies to you, because your moral threshold for what we should do to animals is higher than mine (and most), but certainly someone out there agreeing with you is a bacon lover
Jim, Thanks for your well thought out comment. I think you make some really great points (and dogs in crates is just downright mean!) I’m happy to have an open discussion on any topic I post, and always welcome considered commentary such as your own. It’s the people who just say things like “fish are stupid go to hell” that I’m not particularly interested in hearing from. Thanks again for stopping by
And PS, I actually do eat meat but I don’t eat pork, simply because bacon is fatty and I just never think to cook tenderloin, but I think I’m going to kick it off the menu forever considering your point.
thanks for the post, Karly. keeping animals as decoration is as vapid as having children for amusement. obligatory response to jim: how do you know fish aren’t self aware? like food choices, we are privileged to choose our decoration, why not err on the side of not confining living creatures, regardless of whether they know what’s going on.
Marie:
It’s possible fish are self aware, but very very very unlikely.
For most animals it’s relatively easy to test for self awareness. Put a dog in front of a mirror and it thinks it’s another dog. An animal with a concept of “self” would identify it as such, itself. Fish do similar things, acting as if there’s another fish.
We can go a step further to *really* prove some animals are indeed self aware. Put a painted dot on a self aware animals head, like say a chimp, or an elephant, and then put it in the mirror. The animal will not only NOT react as if another animal is there, but notice there’s paint on it’s head and try to get it off.
Pigs do this. Dogs dont. Cats dont, cows dont…most animals don’t (last I read only about half a dozen animals can do this). That speaks volumes. The pig trying to get the paint off its head is smart enough to see a reflection, know it’s “itself” and then smart enough to project back the reflection to the parts of its body it can’t see. In other words, it’s smart enough not only to know who it is, but what it is. That’s remarkable.
A fishes brain is orders of magnitude simpler than a pigs brain, or almost any other mammals brains. Fish are animals, but so are sea sponges. Hell, even these things are considered animals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxozoa
Things like self awareness and emotion are high order (almost) exclusively mammalian brain functions. In fact, the part of the brain that gave higher order animals those functions doesn’t exist *at all* in fish. Is it possible fish are self aware and emotional in ways we don’t understand? I guess so, but anythings possible, and I don’t really know how far we go with presupposing.
I mean, plants are living things too, and it’s also possible that they developed self awareness and emotion through a series of plant based chemicals and signals, lacking a nervous system entirely. Again, highly unlikely, but imo only a little more unlikely than fish having these same attributes. The part of the brain fish do have is highly mechanical and instinctual, it’s not programmed or able to be programmed for anything abstract, emotional, or self aware.
As an aside, I’ve noticed in my life that most of the people that lump all animals together in the same intellectual lot have no problem with me killing a cockroach. Not saying/implying any of you are like that, there are many people who won’t kill a cockroach but try to catch it and set it free, but it’s something to consider as well.
a quick response to your aside: I don’t kill bugs, period. As much as I find it disgusting, I even take cockroaches outside in the name of being fair and balanced. I had a spider living on a plant in my house for a while, I wanted to move the plant to clean underneath, but her web would have been destroyed if I had done so, so I left it until the spider eventually moved on. Like I said before, I do eat meat, and sometimes I feel bad about this, but I do my best to only eat farm-raised and cruelty free products. I would go vegetarian but it’s just not in my blood. I justify it (poorly) because at least the animal died for a reason, not just because it was offending me (as a home invading cockroach might).
Thanks for all the information on studies involving the self-awareness of animals, I didn’t know about most of it and it’s all pretty interesting. I’m not quite willing to put all my eggs in that basket and make the full leap to accepting that animals wouldn’t feel sorrow when they’re trapped (I’ve heard my cat scream his head off when accidentally stuck in the bathroom) and I’m also not able to enjoy viewing fish in an aquarium. This is not to say that either of us is right or wrong, it’s just a personal preference.
My concerns about a fishtank this size are much more mundane? Who will clean it? Who will pay for it? And most importantly, who will take care of the leaks? No way would I put that huge tank so close to that $5,000 Fortuny lamp.
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