An ordinary life in an extra-ordinary place
Fish eat sweaty feet
Here’s an attraction that is bound to boost the tourist arrivals over the coming months. It’s called Fish’N'Feet and the concept is simple. Stick your feet in a tank of fish and let them suck your flesh. The fish apparently enjoy sucking on dirty, sweaty feet; you apparently enjoy having you feet sucked, and the owner of the business pockets 90 baht. It’s symbiosis in action.
about 2 years ago
Why are both of your poseurs wearing knee-length stockings?
about 2 years ago
They’re not.
about 2 years ago
All right, calf-length then.
about 2 years ago
It’s to protect them from the killer fish.
about 2 years ago
I don’t see no killer fish, as Pink Floyd might have said. There’s a few “stones” about though.
about 2 years ago
A whole new definition for the words ‘getting tanked’.
I assume the pebbles in the bottom are to hide the crap the fish have passed from eating the feet. Or is actually the crap?
about 2 years ago
I’m sorry about this but I do think it needs drawing to Spike’s attention. The use of the word “symbiosis” is,according to the results of my extensive research, troublyingly, wrong.
Symbiosis, (if the 15 dictionaries I have checked are to be believed), is the interaction of TWO persons, organisms etc. for their mutual benefit, but with Fish’N'Feet there are clearly THREE parties involved; the fish, the feet and the owner of the business. I think even the Daily Mail
would not have made such a basic error!
about 2 years ago
You consulted 15 dictionaries; are you really that desperate to prove me wrong…?
Anyway,if you had digested, as I have, the excellent paper by Funk and others on intraspecific phylogenetic congruence among multiple symbiont genomes; then you would know some new stuff which has nothing to do with your point.
about 2 years ago
“Troublyingly” ?? Is one allowed to misspell a word in this excellent organ when nit-picking the host’s use of English?
about 2 years ago
Damn, wish I had spotted that!
about 2 years ago
Spike; “y” didn’t you? Ha ha.
By the way,I checked 15 in the hope that I might find one that proved you right.
Pete: That should be while, rather than when.
about 2 years ago
actually, when is perfectly ok …
about 2 years ago
Shouldn’t “actually” be “Actually”?
about 2 years ago
Perhaps what we have here really can be thought of as symbiosis. If a weary traveller were to come across a stream full of these little fish during a walk through the forest, and poked his feet in, the fish would get a free feed and said weary traveller would get his feet tickled for free. That fits all 15 of GJ’s definitions of symbiosis. All that’s different in this case is we have a filthy capitalist trying to make a few baht to feed his family by exploiting nature and tourists using that symbiosis.
Just a thought
BTW, a Google of the term ‘define:symbiosis’ brought up two definitions which said “between two or more organisms” and one which just said “organisms” without mentioning a number.
about 2 years ago
Lovely story Pete, but Google is not a dictionary.
about 2 years ago
Not a story. “Just a thought”
But you are right Gj – Google is not a dictionary. It is a search engine, and as such gives you links to other places that actually define the word.
about 2 years ago
I thought it was excellent Pete, made me quite emotional; in a non-sexual way of course.
Do you think genuinej actually has 15 dictionaries in his home? Dare we ask him why?
about 2 years ago
O.k., enough already! I’ll come clean.
I don’t have any dictionaries at my home.
I just use the “Dictionary.com” web site.
It gets over 10 million hits each day. Only few of them are from me.
about 2 years ago
Now here’s a coincidence for you. I went camping on the beach last night with my own SWMBO (I’m in Oman at the moment)and we went to collect mussels at low tide. There I am stood waist deep in a rock pool, when all these little fishies come and start nibbling my toes and ankles. Not symbiosis as such as they were bloody annoying, so only one of the organisms involved was actually gaining from the interaction. Got some good mussels though…
about 2 years ago
19 comments and hardly any of them have a Gravatar … get with the programme people … http://www.gravatar.com
about 2 years ago
Thats amazing I want all those fish feaastin on my size 12s.