Interesting Facts

According to research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, fish can remember faces. (By training archerfish with food pellets as a reward,  with a random sequence of 44 faces, scientists were able to teach them to spit at a particular face, with an average accuracy of between 81 and 86 percent.  A researcher Cait Newport said "Obviously the first takeaway is that they could do it. They were distinguishing something really complicated. This also shows that the fish have surprisingly good memories. It certainly challenges the whole idea of a fish with a 30-second memory." Did she really use the word takeaway?  I hope she hasn't trained her fish to recognise English.) Source

The Irish brewers of Guinness are going to stop using fish bladders as part of the filtration process for the first time in their 256-year history.  (Vegans have been campaigning for this ammendment to the traditional brewing process for years.  I can only hope it doesn't change the taste (which was never fishy).)

According to a study carried out by the WWF (World Wildlife Federation) 25% of Brits believe that the dodo still exists. (The unfortunate flightless bird actually became extinct over 400 years ago, and yet 14 per cent of the respondents believe it is currently under threat from hunters, whilst 12% said it was not even endangered!. % OF RESPONDENTS THAT MISTAKENLY IDENTIFIED THE BELOW AS ENDANGERED SPECIES Red Admiral butterfly           38% Red kangaroo                        36% Swan                                       28% Weever fish                            28% Crane fly                                 21% Flamingo         ...

In new legislation, restaurants and takeaways across Europe will be required by law to tell customers if their food contains ingredients known to trigger allergies. (The new rules also apply to meals served in bakeries, cafes, care homes and any packaged produce sold by supermarkets. Remember the nuts? Well it's not just nuts:- The list of ingredients includes:- celery - including any found in stock cubes and soup cereals containing gluten - including spelt, wheat, rye, barley crustaceans - e.g. crabs, lobster, prawns and shrimp paste eggs - including food glazed with egg fish lupin - can be found in some types of bread, pastries, pasta milk molluscs - mussels, land snails, squid, also found in oyster sauce mustard nuts - for example almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, macadamia peanuts - also found in groundnut oil sesame seeds - found in some bread, houmous, tahini soya - found in beancurd, edamame beans, tofu sulphur dioxide - used as a preservative in drie...

15th October - Hagfish Day. Allegedly the ugliest fish in the world, but I disagree, that surely has to go to the blob fish from Australia.

A Japanese restaurateur at Japan's Tsukiji fish market has paid nearly three-quarters of a million dollars for a single tuna. (This is the most ever paid for this endangered species; bluefin tuna. The beautiful animal weighed 269-kilogramme (592-pound), which means it cost a whopping 210,000 yen per kilogramme. It was caught off the coast of Japan's northern Aomori prefecture. Japan consumes three-quarters of the global catch of bluefin, a highly prized sushi ingredient known in Japan as "kuro maguro" (black tuna) and dubbed by sushi connoisseurs the "black diamond" because of its scarcity. Of course tuna is often loaded with mercury and a mix of nasty industrial chemicals such as dioxins, pesticides and PCBs, which have been dumped in our seas and oceans, and with the risk of contamination from the nuclear waste swept away in the Tsunami, this fish may have the last laugh.)

Clownfish (of finding Nemo fame) can change sex. (Seemingly Clownfish society is quite hierarchical, with a reproducing female followed by a mating male, lower down the pecking order there is a bunch of non-mating males waiting in the wings, but, if the mating female dies, the dominant male morphs into a girly fish, and chooses a partner from the various non-mating males. Now that's not something they showed in the film, is it?)

According to USA Today, MaCDonald's Filet-O-Fish was created because of the Catholic observance of not eating meat on Friday or during Lent. (In the early 1960s, a Cincinnati-based MacDonald’s franchise owner, Lou Groen, was failing as a business as a large number of Catholics who lived in his area would not eat meat on Fridays or during Lent. The founder of McDonald’s, Roy Croc, actually wanted Groen to serve a “Hula” burger – a meatless, pineapple sandwich between buns – but Mr Groen wanted to serve a fish sandwich, in his own words, "My fish sandwich was the first addition ever to McDonald's original menu," So, you can probably guess which sandwich was the most successful… 300 million served a year and counting.)

Fish are being used to control malaria in India with remarkable success. (They introduce species of fish that like eating mosquito larvae into the kind of ponds, rivers and wells where mosquitoes lay their eggs. The eggs hatch, and the fish eat the larvae. The mosquitoes which transmit malaria have virtually been eradicated from some areas and according to scientists who presented the results of these pilot projects at the Indian Science Congress in Chandigarh, the number of malaria cases each year in India is falling.)

In the US, nearly 1,400 Pacific salmon populations have been wiped out since the arrival of European settlers. (The most important factors that affect salmon are the "four Hs"—hydropower, habitat, harvest, and hatcheries. To help reduce mortality of juvenile salmon as they encounter dams and hydroelectric turbines on their downstream migration, fishery managers and biologists transport critical populations in barges and trucks. Hitch Hiking Salmon - Madness.) Source: Salmon Decline and Recovery - http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St/Salmon-Decline-and-Recovery.html#ixzz0q6gCzZXH

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, compared with 40 years ago the number of fish in the world's oceans has dropped by 30%. (Unfortunately since 1973 the consumption of fish has doubled, probably not helped by Interesting Fact Number 421 .)

Jellyfish 1 - Salmon 0. (A mass of poisonous jellyfish devastated stocks of organic farmed salmon off the coast of Northern Ireland. Millions of purplish pelagia noctiluca, or mauve stingers, covered 10 miles square and 35 feet deep, they drifted over cages of salmon in Glenarm Bay and stung to death about 120,000 fish. Estimated damage to the organic farm was over £1 million. The jellyfish wiped out the company's mature harvest a month before Christmas, so, I hope you've already got some in the freezer.)

A haddock's mating call starts as a slow knocking sound, before it turns into a quicker hum similar to a small motorcycle revving its engine. (Vroom, vroom, wink, wink.)

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (Why? What on earth could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)

Black Gold caviar costs £20,000 per kilo. (Umm has anyone ever told them it's fish eggs?)

Dutchwoman Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who died this week at 115 after becoming the oldest living person in the world, attributed her longevity to a diet of pickled herrings. (Was it worth it?)

Female bottlenose dolphins are taught by their mothers to use marine sponges to look for food. (They break marine sponges off the seafloor and wear them over their snouts to probe into the seafloor for fish. Does this make them spongers?)

Many lipsticks contain fish scales. (Yes, the pearly effect in many lipsticks is provided by our fishy friends - it's called pearl essence, or "pearlescence." And it's also used in nail polishes, ceramic glazes, etc., to give that shimmery effect. This isn't so much a 'makes you think' fact as a 'makes you sick' fact! Ugh!)