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Hello all, I thought I'd post this review article on goldfish physiology, published in 2008, for your reading pleasure. It concerns the question of how goldfish can find food in the habitats in which their ancestors came from, and where some of them are now. In these habitats, the natural order of things is that they will get food anywhere they can get, and this many times will be on the river/lake/pond bottoms, where there is detritus, sand, gravel, muck, you name it. The water may not be all that clear either. So how do they find food? Here are some salient points: - Goldfish have evolved to be suck up all kinds of stuff with their food from the river/pond/lake bottoms, and then they sift they out in their mouths, whereby they retain the food and spit out (most of) the yucky stuff, including things like sand, mud, gravel, and other very fine particles. - The goldfish digestive system is designed for this particular task, and about 20% of the goldfish's total brain mass is dedicated to taste, and hence sorting out the foods versus other things. Here are some excerpts from the review, Here's the full article http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2543128/pdf/nihms65972.pdf So, as you can see, it is natural for a goldfish to forage for food by taking large gulps of substrate, and then through its highly specialized system, to sift through the junk (in its mouth) and retain the goodies, while spitting out the junk. Essentially, the goldfish gulps in muck, sand, gravel and other things to find food. It's in their biology. Don't underestimate our awesome fish of choice. They have some amazing tricks, well, up their mouths. :rofl I hope you find this article as interesting as I did. Thanks!
