Re: NANFA-- Natives should get TV exposure

DasArm_at_aol.com
Thu, 21 Sep 2000 01:07:36 EDT

In a message dated 9/20/00 10:35:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
darterman_at_hotmail.com writes:

<< Yeah! HA!... I have done my share of mixing too! I almost forgot to say
that
some people don't realize that mostly, only the colorful tropicals are
collected for sale, from the wild, because they are eye catching. There are
just as many "drab" tropicals as are there natives, here. I always thought
that this left a distorted view on natives, however, in that the impression
this creates is one of "All tropicals are colorful"... and "All natives are
drab!!!" .... What do you think??? >>

I was thinking the very same thing actually; just forgot to mention that
point. I know that a lot of tropicals can be drab; just like some natives, so
the attitude that "natives aren't colorful; therefore they're not cool" is
ignorant. A particular habitat is only going to have so many "pretty" fishes
in it anyway. All the fishes in one system aren't going to be bright red,
blue, and yellow; nature doesn't generally work that way. People are
obviously unaware of that. A lot of the native minnows for instance are more
colorful than many of the tropical minnows I see in the local pet store. And
a lot of the fishes form the pet store are fishes native to the U.S. and
Mexico (I imagine that a lot of people think that Mexico is tropical, but I
think that only the southern part is; I could be wrong). Fishes like mollies
from the Gulf Coast states and Mexico, Rio Grande cichlids from Texas, all of
the gars, swordtails and platies from Mexico, and flagfish from Florida, are
all North American. I've seen channel catfish and longnose gars which are
native to Michigan in local pet stores before; I bet a lot of people that go
there don't know they're native to this state.

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