I work with livestock...
I work importing and exporting marine aquarium corals and fishes for a major company. This basically means I work in a big brightly lit warehouse full of tiny little tanks, full of tiny little fishes (and larger and larger fishes). Pretty shite job to be honest, but it does come with the degree of sick power some people crave. My job is to go around the thousands of fishes once or twice a day and pull out all the sick looking ones, the ones with "missing bits and extra bits, and funny looking bits too" so mr fishey with one eye, or cotton wool balls growing out of his gills, or no tail - they all come with me into the 'sick' room. Unbeknown to me for the first few weeks of doing this, another member of staff was euthanising the poor buggers. Anything 'unsaleable' or 'unsaveable' was put into a bucket of anaesthetic and killed (humanely, but still..) some of these fishes being perfectly healthy, just being born deformed, á la Finding Nemo.

So I get the job of deciding who is too deformed, or too sick to live each day. I feel like a mini fish Hitler. Although, many a fish has been known to go home with staff members to take refuge in their home aquarium to avoid the dreaded bucket of doom - I myself have had many 'one-of-a-kind' fishes when I kept my aquarium. Seeing as most of us there have a heart, we do attempt to squirrel away the healthy, but unsaleable fish - just out of sight of the management. I dread to think how many wonky fishes they'll find that we've hidden away out in our tens of thousands of litre resevoir when they drain it some day... it's like a little sanctuary of Quazimodo fish out there!
( Bathory, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 10:05, 12 replies)

Awwww
If that was me I'd be forever taking them home. It's a shame you can't still sell them off cheaply as not perfect but still healthy - I'm sure there's probably more of a demand for it than people would imagine. I think slightly deformed animals are immensely cute - one day I want a three legged one eyed ginger tomcat. My friends now live in fear of me one day maiming a healthy cat! (Which I wouldn't, by the way!)
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 11:17, closed)

.
I had a one eyed blue ringed angelfish, called LeeLemon (Leela, in Futurama) he was such a sweetheart. And a perfectly healthy clownfish that had a small tail, and another clownfish which was born a bit too rounded. We keep saying we should have a 'rehome bin' with all the healthy deformed chaps in, but apparently it doesn't look good to have deformed fish around *sigh* I mean they could at least feed them to larger fish or something, circle of life and such. Just seems a bit mean to put them all to sleep just because they were born odd-shaped.
( Bathory, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 11:45, closed)

I logged in ...
just to click this.

Thank you sir, for furthering endeavours to ensure the genetic diversity of several species.
(Que?, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 12:44, closed)

At least four of those fishes should be fish.

( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 12:47, closed)

I know...
But fishes sounds a whole lot cuter than fish. But not quite as good as feesh. Yes.
( Bathory, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 14:47, closed)

Indeed.

( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 16:24, closed)

I thought fish was like sheep
both a singular and a plural.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sun 11 Jul 2010, 15:56, closed)

It is, if you are talking about individual fish.
When you are talking about species then the plural is fishes. So, all the fish in the sea, means all the individual fish, but all the fishes in the sea, means all the species of fish.

Meh, now I'm confused. Should that last fish be fish or fishes.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 16:23, closed)

i'm not sure i understand
so my pond is full of both many fish, and many fishes?
( zulu eh?, Mon 12 Jul 2010, 16:05, closed)

You could claim
that they were perfectly normal mongfish.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 12:53, closed)

I'm full of admiration for you and your colleagues, saving the 'ugly' fish
and I'd certainly do the same. All my pets are crossbreeds and rescues. The search for 'perfection' in animals is wasteful and creepy.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Sun 11 Jul 2010, 16:49, closed)

i used to do this too
When u worked in an aquarium shop, couldn't bare to kill them.
(Kip, Mon 12 Jul 2010, 13:29, closed)