Not sure if this belongs in The Conjurer's Corner or Current Events but Chinese magician Fu Yandong has developed a trick to make 6 live fish swim in formation. Animal rights groups are saying the live fish must have magnets inside and is therefore cruel but he says not.
I'm going with magnets. It has the classic "show it's empty under the table, then cover it up so you can't see underneath while the trick is actually being done".
A goldfish’s memory lasts only three seconds.
BUSTED
Jamie trained his goldfish to recognize color patterns and complete an obstacle course under water. They remembered what Jamie had taught them over a month later and easily completed the same course without Jamie’s prompting.
Probably not dead, there are one or two spots where fish are seen to shake a bit on their own, but I don't think those swimming movements look natural either.
There was a previous thread on this some time ago. The fish are real enough but they are clearly being dragged around by a force of some kind, almost certainly magnets.
I go with something even simpler than magnets. I go for lights. The fish are trained to follow a red laser. You can see flashes of red light on the fish during part of the show. Hence nothing cruel.
I go with something even simpler than magnets. I go for lights. The fish are trained to follow a red laser. You can see flashes of red light on the fish during part of the show. Hence nothing cruel.
I wouldn't say magnets. If they were dead fish and had magnets sewn into them, then they'd stick together when they got close. Goldfish can in fact be trained, and I don't see the concept of trained goldfish that outrageous.
Magnets could work, if the poles weren't directly facing/opposing each other.
The movements definitely don't strike me as natural, even if I allow that it is possible to train goldfish.
If they are real fish, then the magnets seem like the most likely scenario to me.
I think those lights are reflections/stage lights. They appear to be on the bottom of the tank, and they weren't lining up with the movements of the fish.
Something else to consider is that he may have found a way to utilize the lateral line of the fish. Now that I think about it, if you were to try to train a fish, this would be the way to do it. But (and now I am really just talking out of my butt) I think highly predatory fish may be more appropriate subjects in this sense than scavengers like Goldfish. The lateral line does detect magnetic fields (at least in some species) so perhaps he is using magnets, but their aren't any magnets in the fish.
ETA: The fish moving in opposition- this implies magnets (or lateral line) to me. Visual cues would be difficult. Also, if you are counting, that is 45 times in a dozen sentences that I contradicted myself.
I'd suspect the fish are fed small ball bearings, thence magnets. I've known goldfish and axolotls to eat rocks and stuff while grazing (comes through them eventually, but not good for them). Also, it's a shallow pond they are in, so they will definitely sink to the bottom and be accessible to magnets underneath.
I found this one rather crude and uncompelling, though probably not expecially cruel, at least in the sense of not permanently harming the fish.
Plenty of clues in this one.
In the video, he brings the fish out in a small opaque ceramic jar. He momentarily tilts it towards the camera, and you can see the fish inside. There doesn't look to be a lot of water in the jar with the fish, and when he dumps the jar into the tank, it doesn't look like a lot of water comes out. In those conditions, I'd expect to see some struggling from the fish while in the jar; they're in close quarters and without much water. They're just sitting there. That might mean they're dead or replicas, or it night mean they're sedated.
They're not magnetic, because they don't stick together in the jar or in the tank. Once they're dumped in, they separate immediately. That doesn't mean they couldn't have an iron pellet or some circuitry though, just not magnets.
The fish aren't very active when he dumps them in. It looks to me like they're initially drifting, though they quickly stop drifting and have a fixed position, with a bit of side to side motion. After a little while being motionless, there's a bit of swimming around. They might be live fish; perhaps the jar had something that kept their activity low, like water partially depleted of oxygen. Certainly the area to volume of the shallow tank is enough to ensure plenty of dissolved oxygen.
The bottom of the tank is made of a white material. It might be white glass or white plastic. We never see it in any position but the one it starts in. As some posters have noticed, it appears at times to have some strange light reflections.
There's some misdirection with the tablecloth. If there's nothing under the table, there's no reason for the tablecloth. Also it appears to do something strange as he throws it down, like it scoots under or around the tank. There's a platform under the table. The cloth goes down just past the edge of the platform. From the way he holds the cloth, we can't see if it's a three sided drape or a four sided drape. The camera never shows the back view of the table.
There's a fishtank on a stand directly behind the table. It has a drape around its stand. It is lined up with the table, with just a few feet between its base and the table, but it does not feature in any way in the act. There aren't even any fish in it, and the performer brings the fish on in a jar...
Here's my best take on it.
The fish are either live or realistic replicas. If the fish are live, they're fed steel BB shot. Live fish aren't injured by eating aquarium gravel so they'll probably have no ill effects from BB shot. The extra weight makes them a bit lethargic, plus they're in oxygen depleted water. This ensures that they'll swim around a bit when poured into high oxygen water, as they'll need to get some fresh water through their gills. The tank bottom is translucent, and the tank is lit from above. The drape for the table is made so that it goes around the tank, so that a hypothetical person under the table would be able to see the shadows of the fish above. Once the drape is placed around the table, an assistant scoots out from under the big fishtank in back and under the table. Even if this is on a stage, the audience won't see the assistant because of the raised platform. The assistant either has sticks with magnets, or finger extensions with magnets on the ends. They can see the fish shadows, and capture the fish with the magnets, continuing to jiggle them around a bit to simulate swimming. Given that the fish did swim around a bit before the drape was in place, they're probably live, by the way. When the magician begins his routine, the assistant drags the fish into line and then back and forth in formation. After the trick, the camera cuts away and follows the magician and announcer across the stage to a picture of fish, to set up the next trick, giving the assistant a moment to escape back into his or her hidey-hole. The audience is watching the next trick, while the assistant crawls away from them, shielded by the big tank and the table. The magician does a trick shoving fish into the painting, then the camera pans back to the big tank for the painting into fish trick, showing that the table has been removed. The big tank no longer has a drape on its base, but does definitely have enough space for someone to crawl under...
It's hard to tell - but it seams the fish are floating rather than being dragged over the ground - if a magnet was strong enough to control the fishs' movements through the water - wouldn't it have to be strong enough to pulls them down, too?
It's hard to tell - but it seams the fish are floating rather than being dragged over the ground - if a magnet was strong enough to control the fishs' movements through the water - wouldn't it have to be strong enough to pulls them down, too?
I think you can see in a couple of places that the orange fish have their backs sticking out of the water slightly. This might mean there is very little water in the tank and they are swimming on (or being dragged around on) a piece of glass to give the perception there is more water in there than there really is.
I think Andrew Wiggin is probably right in his analysis, even if it is not magnets inside the fish I still vote cruelty.
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