W
Wolfman Woody
Guest
I love fish. I have them in the living room, in the garden and in the freezer.
Over the past couple of months we've been watching a gourami, a golden something, that we've had for about 6 or 7 years now. It's mate died some time ago and we've been waiting for this one to give up the ghost for a while too.
Anyway, it started having fits or seizures every week or so. It would swim eratically in circles almost uncontrollably for maybe 4 or 5 minutes and then regain conciousness and sit at the bottom of the tank for a few more minutes.
Afterwards it would behave quite normally. Of course, we didn't watch it 24/7 so have no idea just how many seizures it was having.
In the last few days they got so regular and finally it got so bad it could no longer swim in an upright situation as you would expect. So I took it out, put it in a polythene bag and put it in the freezer, the kindest way of despatching them.
The reason for me mentioning this is that despite all the stuff I've read about how simple a structure a fish's brain is and how they're not supposed to have emotions and not feel pain as we know it, and I've written enoughon this myself, it surprises me that they can still suffer from some form of epilepsy.
There is still much that we don't understand about a fish's nervous system and it's brain and I doubt we ever will. Just how many epileptic fish could be in our rivers and lakes that we are unaware of?
Over the past couple of months we've been watching a gourami, a golden something, that we've had for about 6 or 7 years now. It's mate died some time ago and we've been waiting for this one to give up the ghost for a while too.
Anyway, it started having fits or seizures every week or so. It would swim eratically in circles almost uncontrollably for maybe 4 or 5 minutes and then regain conciousness and sit at the bottom of the tank for a few more minutes.
Afterwards it would behave quite normally. Of course, we didn't watch it 24/7 so have no idea just how many seizures it was having.
In the last few days they got so regular and finally it got so bad it could no longer swim in an upright situation as you would expect. So I took it out, put it in a polythene bag and put it in the freezer, the kindest way of despatching them.
The reason for me mentioning this is that despite all the stuff I've read about how simple a structure a fish's brain is and how they're not supposed to have emotions and not feel pain as we know it, and I've written enoughon this myself, it surprises me that they can still suffer from some form of epilepsy.
There is still much that we don't understand about a fish's nervous system and it's brain and I doubt we ever will. Just how many epileptic fish could be in our rivers and lakes that we are unaware of?