DID YOU KNOW?

Around 150 years ago in Thailand, Betta fish started to become pets when kids would collect them from the rice paddies and place them together to watch them spar. As these contests grew in popularity, the King of Siam began to regulate and tax Betta fish.

The Betta fish gained European attention in 1840 when the King gave a few of them to a Danish physician named Dr Theodore Cantor. He studied and bred them, and by the 1890s, Betta fish were being imported into France and Germany.

The first Betta fish didn’t enter the United States until 1910.

The pet trade’s population of Bettas is stocked almost entirely from captive populations, not from the wild according to Earth.com.

Just like us, Betta fish are diurnal. That means they are active during the day and sleep at night, requiring darkness for a good night’s rest.