Man vs Goldfish: Man - 1, Goldfish - 0

[sciguy125]

I feel so stupid about what happened to me this morning that I must share. I've had this goldfish for over 10 years now. Even though goldfish aren't very high on the intelligence ladder, anything that's been around for 10 years will learn a thing or two.

A few years ago, he figured out how to make a chomping noise. He's able to suck water into his mouth and make a loud enough noise to draw attention. My room is about 20 feet away from the tank and I can still hear him with my door closed. It's probably close to the loudness of a cat's normal meow. When I wake up in the morning, he reminds me that he needs to be fed. I feed him once a day when I get up at about 6:30. But I know that he's awake before 6:15 because I can hear him asking for food. If he looks over the table that's between his tank and my room, he's able to see me walking out. And he gets more riled up and starts splashing a little. This way, I never forget to feed him.

After I feed him, I go about my business: email, Slashdot, Fark, ChiefDelphi... When I come back out of my room (he's eaten all the food by this time), he swims around trying to get my attention, but doesn't make any noise. He wants more food, but I'm pretty sure that if I kept feeding him, he'd just keep eating until he couldn't swim any more. He knows that I only feed him once a day and he'll have to wait until tomorrow for more.

Today though, he tried to trick me. When I came out of my room the second time, he was swimming around, making noise like he does right before I feed him. I walked over there and got the food container out and almost put some in. Then it occured to me that I already fed him. It didn't work, but it almost did... I couldn't believe it. I was almost tricked by a goldfish.

He has two little tank mates that are trying to copy him, but they're still too small to make any appreciable noise. It might start to get annoying when all three of them are at it. The other problem will be that there'll be three of them against me. I'm not sure if they're smart enough to work together, but he almost got a second helping of food today on his own, so anything's possible...

BEWARE THE GOLDFISH!