My girlfriend works at a pet store. Her boss has told her that Siamese Fighting Fish ( known colliquially as Bettas ) are found in elephant’s footprints.
This seems a might shady to me… However would they get there…
Can anyone tell me what a Betta’s natural habitat is?
Water?
They’re found in the Orient… native to Thailand, but most likely spread all around the tropical far-east by now. They live in warm swamps and rice paddies, but can also be found in roadside ditches and such. The only way you’d find them in elephant’s footprints is if the print was in the mud near some type of water body, and for some reason stayed there (dried?), and was later flooded when the pond over-flowed carrying some fish or fry with it… nah, that’s getting far-fetched (but still remotely possible). Some kids could throw some in a little puddle made by and elephant print… but the general tone is that such a thing would be a rarity - unless the elephant was frolicing in the shallows of a pond, left some footy-prints on the bottom, and the water level later dropped down creating a small pool with stranded bettas in it… well you get the idea. It’s kinda like saying “pigeons are found on balconies” (well yeah, they can be, but… :rolleyes: )
I agree with what mmmiiikkkeee said. I have read they were raised intentionally in rice paddies also. I would guess they were not particularly living in the footprints, but were probably trapped there. Also, the Bettas that you find in pet-shops are usually not the same as ones found in the wild, though some places are able to special order “wild” specimens (at a much higher cost). They have been bred for those brighter colors, and it is unlikely they were ever kept in puddles of any kind.