Goldfish

Animal Series

by Anna Marie Roos

Living work of art, consumer commodity, scientific hero, and environmental menace: the humble goldfish is the ultimate human cultural artifact. A creature of supposedly little memory and a short lifespan, it has held universal appeal as a reservoir for human ideas and ideals. In ancient China, goldfish were saved from predators in acts of religious reverence and selectively bred for their glittering grace. In the East, they became the subject of exquisite art, regarded as living flowers that moved, while in the West, they became ubiquitous residents of the Victorian parlor. Cheap and eminently available, today they are bred by the millions for the growing domestic pet market, while also proving to be important to laboratory studies of perception, vision, and intelligence.

In this illuminating homage to the goldfish, Anna Marie Roos blends art and science to trace the surprising and intriguing history of this much-loved animal, challenging our cultural preconceptions of a creature often thought to be common and disposable.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2019

Reviews

[Amal Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up at my university library. Insightful read, particularly as an avid aquarist myself (though I’ve only dabbled with goldfish, my specialization is more in aquascaping and tropical freshwater species).

[Nicolas Stagliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buying a new goldfish motivated me to pick this book back up again after months. I really enjoyed this, it sort of tracks goldfish, both as a pet and also as a commodity, and documents it's history from when they were first bred through all the different times they were imported to various countries, and how they were once super rare and valuable, but now are considered common fish. It's really quite interesting, I did not know the majority of the things this book said, goldfish are much more interesting than I ever could have imagined… And this book does a good job at keeping my interest even when sharing the parts of the history of goldfish that might be considered boring. It also has a lot of color pictures of paintings, advertisements, photographs, stuff like that, just images related to goldfish, and these images greatly increased my enjoyment of the book. If you are not someone who is interested in goldfish, you might not find this book as interesting… But it does have a lot of history to it. Also, if this review feels clunky, it's because I am using speech to text because I just turned off my computer and I don't feel like typing on my phone keyboard.

[Dahlian Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this whole series so wasn't surprised that this was sooo good.