re:could/would a betta eat out of your hand

["JimK" <jmk at cstone_net>]

----- Original Message -----
> Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 10:03:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Erin Poythress <anang3 at yahoo_com>
> Subject: could/would a betta eat out of your hand?
>
> I realize discussions on here are generally of a much
> more scientific and comlplex nature, but I wanted to
> ask because I'm writing a story in which something
> like this happens, and I was wondering how likely it
> would be that a very friendly betta would eat off a
> person's finger. I never tried to get any of my fish
> to do that, so I dunno. Thanks in advance. Wish me
> luck upon submission!
> Erin
> Atlanta
>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The short answer is yes.  I have a solitary female betta in a 3 gal bowl who
gets very excited at feeding time.  Occasionally I feed frozen cubes, and
since a cube is too much for her, I hold the cube with forceps in her water
till it starts to thaw a little.  She will grab hold of stuff starting to
thaw off the cube and not let go.  I have lifted her head out of the water
before, trying to help her bite some food off.  I doubt she would care if I
held it with my fingers, but it would be hard for me to do... Long ago I
worked in a pet store, and I recall feeding a large Queen Trigger Fish by
hand, first holding live goldfish by the tail, later I found I could hold a
big pinch of flake food between my fingers and he/she would come and
carefully take it from me.  Triggerfish have mouths like a stumpy birds
beak, instead of lips they have big cutting teeth strong enough to bite off
coral, so I always felt this was a most intelligent fish to learn to extract
the flake food from between my fingers without doing any damage.  Of course
hand-feeding the jumbo Oscars live goldfish was not dangerous, just fun
(except, of course, for the goldfish)...Good luck!

JimK