Bloggus

something i've never heard before we are fish-sitting for our neighbors this week, keeping a nameless blue betta in fishy pellets night and day. he responds quickly to the sound of the cover being taken off the bowl for each meal, even if he's sleeping on the pebbles on the bottom. today i dropped the pellets in, and as usual he swam up to the top to grab them from the surface of the water. then all of a sudden i realized that i could hear him chewing. this sounds pretty mundane as i write it, but for some reason it hit me, i had never heard a fish chew before. i hadn't considered that the hard little pellets would need to be broken down for swallowing, nor had it occured to me that a fish might have teeth for which to accomplish this mastication. i stood there and watched him attack each of the three tiny food pellets, chewing each one before moving on. i'm not sure why it fascinated me so much, but it did. have you ever heard a fish chew? if someone asked me that question a week ago i would have laughed at them.