of Achilles, Ophelia & shopping

Do you know that animals suffer from depression too? When they do, symptoms include lethargy, lack of appetite and a general feeling of sian-ness. Xiao-jin was somewhat depressed days before he moved on, and I can see the same thing happening in one of my dad's fighting fish, whom we named Achilles.

The bitter and sad truth about fighting fish (as with all animal species) is that dominance and territoriality are always the prevailing situations that they find themselves in. We introduced Achilles to our first fish (who has since been flushed down the bowl by my very non-sympathetic father), and he dominated. However, after Samson came into the picture, Achilles lost his dominance, and became timid. It has now come to the point tt Achilles just sinks himself to the bottom of the tank, making no effort to swim, or even eat his food.

I think Achilles won't last long in his current state. So last night, the family headed down to the aquarium to see if any help could be found for Achilles. The owner suggested buying a female fighting fish to provoke Achilles into "showing-off" his prowess and in turn, regain some of his confidence. However, the drawback is tt this isn't a sure-win solution, and so far, Achilles hasn't really been responding to Ophelia, the female.

Oh well. I really think tt the animal world is a faithless one, where only the fittest survive, and the others are left to die. It's cruel, but yet this is nature's way of ensuring that only the strongest will remain.

Hah I feel as though I've just written a piece for my Animal.Behavior mod! Sorry if it bored you, but it was smthg tt I felt quite strongly about. Luckily such dominance doesn't really exist in my terrapins - they've managed to agree on a hierarchial order and live with it.

Moving on to my favourite topic, shopping, well, I only bought a white top and accessories last weekend! And mummy bought me new heels yday when we went shopping at AMK Hub, so all in all, I've been rather good still. No pictures cos I haven't been taking any recently, so yes, this has been a very wordy post. Hee

//edit//: Brandon very kindly commented tt I'd spelt the name 'Achilles' wrongly, so now its amended!