I picked these five beauties up yesterday, not realizing the sordid past involved. Many of you have probably heard of parrot fish — these are “jelly bean” parrots, and it wasn’t until doing some online searching that I learned just how cruel life’s been to the little guys. First off, they’re mutts. Their fascinating yet arguably unhealthy body shape and scheme is the result of crossbreeding, and what’s even stranger? I can’t find a site that positively identifies which two types of fish were crossbred. Apparently, it’s like the Colonel’s recipe or some shit. This has given the little mutants a wealth of problems — their spines are abnormal, they can’t chew food like most other fish, eyes are a bit fucked…so on and so on. That’s just the half of it, though.

The fish are popular mainly because, as freshwater fish, they have alarmingly bright colors. Beautiful? Yes, but completely unnatural. During their albino adolescence, the fish are injected with dye-loaded needles, which literally spread the fluid colors through the parrots’ bodies. Pretty sick, aye? And you thought GloFish were bad. The process invariably kills many of the fish, and the ones who survive potentially contract diseases from others by way of the dirty dye needles. Worse yet, the fish are charged with a terribly shortened lifespan. All that shit for a little extra color — a color that will usually fade out in time. I had absolutely no idea about any of this when the fish were purchased, and while I’m not gonna pretend to be some big activist (I once ate alligator jerky), it’s still kinda frigged up. Fish like these filter mainly filter here from Japan, and have been banned in a few other countries.

Four of the parrots came from the same store — the fifth, called a “Christmas Parrot,” came from another. I was taken with the last one because it was A) cheap, B) cute n’ small, and C) off-white with green speckles. The lady working there told us that the fish “used to be red and green,” citing how the parrots sometimes change colors. That’s true, but not in this case — it just lost its unnatural dye.

They’re pretty fish, though. And they smile a lot. Must’ve blocked out the bad memories.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!