Patty Eschenberg, age 11, Bureau, Ill
Do other tropical fish besides guppies have live babies?
The little guppy has several cousins who also give birth to live babies. All are natives of warm fresh or brackish waters. In the past 50 years, this fish family has attracted a lot of attention. Certain of the cousins have been crossbred, Some of the strains are the pampered darlings of our tropical aquariums. Others are valuable in the field of medical research. One guppy cousin has been put to work at keeping down the mosquito population,
Mr. Guppy is. less than an inch long. What he lacks. in size, he makes up in beauty. He is a darting flash of harlequin colors greens, yellows, reds, violets and blacks. No two males are marked alike. Mrs. Guppy is twice the size of her husband, but in the wild she is a drab color: Fancy strains have produced pastel colored lady guppies, also white and golden ones.
Mrs. Guppy gives birth to 100 or so little live babies about once a month. She is an agile creature forever darting after insects, larvae, fish eggs and floating algae. And she is not very smart. Sometime She mistakes her own babies for bits of food. This has earned her a bad reputation as a mother.
Her cousin, the mosquito fish, has been imported into over ?0 countries.. This makes her the most widely distributed fresh water fish in the world. Her native home was originally in the southwest U.S, and northern Mexico. This wonderful little helper can gobble up 150 larvae mosquitoes in ten hours. The female is about two inches long, the male a little over. half an inch. Live babies are born every three to four weeks in broods of 40 or 50.
The platyfish and the Mexican swordtail are also guppy cousins. Both are native to Central and South America, The platyfish come in the gayest of colors. They have produced some of the most beautiful strains of our tropical fish. The wagtail with black lacy tail fin is a platyfish. Mrs. Platy is about two inches long and bears her live babies in broods of 150 or so.
The male Mexican swordfish carries a three inch sword below his tail, In captivity this fellow breeds with the platyfish. Countless hybrid strain have been developed. These hybrids suffer from diseases which make them valuable in medical research. The platyfish swordtails are the guinea pigs of the fish world,
The four eye fish is a larger guppy cousin. He swims near the surface where his two bulging eyes can see both above and below the water. He is quick, smart and hard to catch. He wontt be fooled by a fly on a hook and he hurdles over the edge of a fish net, Mrs Foureye is a foot long. Her babies are born in broods of only a dozen or so. She is smarter than her smaller cousins and rarely mistakes them for food,