Koi and common goldfish are so cool. Both are just domesticated color forms of carp - amur carp and prussian carp, respectively. If you left them to their own devices in the wild, they'd return to their original color forms within a couple generations.
Y'all probably already knew that, but what's super curious to me is that this part of Asia seems to be the only place where decorative carp have been domesticated in this way. The yellowfish in Africa, for instance, would be a prime candidate for a decorative pond fish - they're technically barbs, but they are extremely closely related to carp.
It seems like everywhere else in the world, however, people have focused on smaller fish for decorative spaces and kept the large fish as a food product. Thailand and Vietnam brought us domestic forms of bettas and mountain minnows, parts of South America brought us domestic forms of guppies and cichlids, etc. It seems to me that the most obvious explanation is wealth and stability - you couldn't raise decorative stock unless there was some sort of leisure class in times of relative food security.
So this is my long-winded way of asking, why didn't European monarchies ever domesticate decorative fish? Carp are all up in their rivers, and some of them have striking coloration. I love fishkeeping, but it does seem like the frivolous sort of endeavor that monarchs would pursue.
afaik people first domesticated carp to keep the rice paddies clear of pests, the fact that they also helped fertilize the crops was an added bonus. i think ducks were also used, might have just been in the village pond and not the paddies themselves though.
That makes sense! And from there, they just occasionally collected the prettier ones until they started breeding for specific traits? I need to do some reading this weekend because now I am really curious.
yup! and i said 'domesticated' but i suspect that people invented sluiced paddies first and the fish just got in of their own accord and stuck around.
