How to befriend Koi?
That is the ideal of every koi hobbyist: to build a close relationship with your ornamental carp, a relationship that provides mutual pleasure. Many koi keepers are happy and proud to say that their fish are ‘tame’. Tam? Are they tamed, like a tiger or other circus beast with reward and punishment? How befriend Koi? Teaching them reflexes.
Reward and punishment do not fit in a relationship based on respect and love. Instead of the words ‘taming’, the process that leads to a bond between humans and fish, we can also use the term ‘conditioning’. And that brings me to the reflex theory of the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.
Pavlov reaction and Koi friends.
He was professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg and renowned for his research into the reflexes that lead to changes in the secretion of the salivary glands, stomach and pancreas. He showed that in addition to innate reflexes (such as responding to a smile) we have also taught reflexes, which are first associated with natural stimuli and which can later independently influence organ activity.
I was very interested in that in the 1960s. I thought it would be a good idea to apply those conditioned reflexes in my own life. After all, Pavlov (1849 – 1936) received the Nobel Prize in 1904. He had never heard of koi carp, of course, and neither did I during those turbulent hippie days. Nobody, anyway, with some people in Japan excepted. Nevertheless, I will let the Russian show up here because we can learn from him how to build a good relationship with our fish and how to befriend Koi.
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Seven tips on how to Befriend Koi Fish
1. Condition with a Signal: Use a consistent signal, like ringing a bell or snapping fingers underwater, to train your koi to come to you.
2. Create a Comfortable Environment: Ensure your garden and pond are pleasant and well-maintained to reduce stress for your koi.
3. ストレス要因を避ける： Protect your koi from predators and avoid stressful situations to keep them healthy and tame.
4. Teach Reflexes: Apply Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflexes by associating feeding times with specific signals.
5. Gentle Interaction: Slowly introduce your hand while feeding and avoid sudden movements to help your koi get used to human contact.
6. Play with Your Koi: Once tamed, you can gently lift smaller koi out of the water and let them jump back in, or stroke larger koi on their heads.
7. Recognize and Respond: Spend quality time with your koi to understand their behavior, and they may start recognizing and responding to you individually.
For whom the bell rings and sounds how to befriend Koi?
When you ring a bell while feeding your fish, they learn to come to you even if you don’t feed them. If that bell sounds very loud, it will also condition your neighbours, so you better choose a different sound. As long as it is always the same. This is about the principle of recognisability. The fish will ad the ringing of the bell or any other sound to the pleasant feeling the fish get when it eats.
Wilfried van der Elst once told me, ‘I went into his garden with a proud koi hobbyist. He asked me to stop against the wall, clapped his hands and threw food on the water and shouted: “Look, they are all tame already.” Wilfried stepped forward. The young carp dove into the depths and stopped eating. The man didn’t know what “to be tamely” meant.
A modern definition.
I will try to give a modern definition of the word ‘tame’. ‘Modern’, because I think that tame in the sense of ‘dependent on people’ is too blunt. I put it this way: an animal is domesticated when there is a mutual relationship between humans and animals, which makes each other’s lives more pleasant and from which they both reap the benefits. Koi make our lives enjoyable because of their beauty and their cuddliness. The koi hobbyist, in turn, provides the animal with food and a good pond.
Avoid stress for your Koi friends and see how to befriend Koi!
Koi lose their beauty when they swim around in ugly surroundings. That can create a barrier between your fish and yourself. Bad water conditions mean that the fish are not having a good time. They do not get tame. If the garden looks neglected, you will not feel at home in it and that is another blockage.
To achieve a good relationship with the animals, you have to create a garden in which you feel comfortable and a pond in which the fish are having a good time. They must be in optimal condition if you want to achieve results.
Keep predators away let them not learn how to befriend Koi?
Factors that cause stress should also be eliminated as much as possible. After a visit from a heron, you usually lose a fish for good and a number for a few weeks. Because they hide between the plants or in the seams of the foil. White spot disease can soon break out. To protect the pond well against predators, which unfortunately also includes a part of humanity nowadays.
Because I had ‘a little’ too much koi, I gave some of my fish to my back neighbour. A few weeks later some misfit had been fishing in a neighbour’s pond and had run off with a Kohaku of about two feet. But worse, Bear, my first koi (Israeli Ogon of questionable quality), had also been caught. It probably fell, because it was open on both sides. We couldn’t save him. Moreover, the other fish in that pond will have lost their tameness.
Cuddly your Koi friends and feel how to befriend Koi?
They have to get close to that to get some in. Do not make any busy movements or try to touch the fish. That will take some more time.
Snapping with the fingers quickly triggers a conditioned reflex. Immediately after the signal, the fish will rush towards you.
The food is no longer necessary. After a while, even the finger clipping is unnecessary. They come when you appear at the edge of the pond. They even swim along when you walk around the water feature.
The curious thing is that they don’t do that to everyone who walks by the pond. Somehow they know who to fear and who not. I am convinced they recognize your body odour. They don’t see well.
Tip to how to befriend Koi. use the best Koi food.
Playing starts and you learn how to befriend Koi?
Once you’ve tamed them for a few months, you can start playing with them. Just lift the little ones out of the water carefully by hand and let them jump off. In my pond, they even come back to do the same trick again. Stroke the bigger ones over their heads, push them back a bit and see how they react. They love it.
Everything will be easier from now on. Catching doesn’t have to be a hunt anymore if you let them get used to the landing net. So replace the clipping of the fingers by carefully moving the landing net back and forth. Once you have done this, they will swim towards the net if necessary, for example for a check. This way you can teach your koi all kinds of things.
A different way of dealing with Koi friends.
Is a way to teach koi things (the ‘building in’ of some conditioned reflexes) the same as tame? No, of course not. But it is fish keeping different style. It takes time to Learn your Koi reflexes: quality time for the carp and the caretaker.
The learned reflexes make it easier to keep the fish in optimal condition. Stress factors are much less impressive than before. On a good day, you suddenly notice that you deal with koi differently. That is the moment you can step up to better koi.
How to befriend Koi? Opening up.
It seems as if they are opening up as if they are going to see you as one of them. They suddenly surprise you with their games. The carps show better and better what they like. They are affectionate and somehow show that they enjoy when you pet your Nishikigoi gently on their heads.
I have managed to get the older animals to respond when I call them by name. Perhaps many a reader is now shaking their head in disbelief. I can’t prove it unfortunately because they did not do it when there are others in the yard.
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