NEWS107
13
DominantmaleTropheus sp.”Kasanga”,alsoknownas the ”RedRainbow”.
Naturalists canonlybeglad that thedinosaurswent extinct.Because in anerawhenpeople aremore inclined
tobelieve inHollywood fantasies than the realistic,albeit far fromsimple,viewsof science,therewouldundoub-
tedly be countless deaths because of the fact that herbivorous saurians were portrayed as peaceful giants in
the film JurassicPark.
Peacefulherbivores? - far from it!
Tropheus
sp."Kasanga"
bySarahNieten
his is the resultofavery frequentlyob-
served linguistic misrepresentation.
The carnivores of theanimal kingdomare
generallyassociatedwith theattribute "ag-
gressive", andherbivoreswith "peaceful".
But themodeof feedinghasnothingwhat-
soever todowith thepotential foraggres-
sion inananimal species.Forexample, the
Africanbiggamespecies thatkills themost
people through its aggressivebehavior is
not theLionbut theHippopotamus,which
isexclusivelyvegetarian.
Feedingbehavior isn'teverything
Thismisinterpretationof animal behavior
is probably the result of the fact that in
humansocietysomepeople regard thekil-
lingof animals for food as aggressive and
morally suspect behavior,while thekilling
ofplants for food isseenasapeaceful and
preferablealternative.But thisdefinitionof
T
aggressivebehavior relates exclusively to
predator-prey behavior, or, to put it so-
mewhatmoregenerally, feedingbehavior.
Other aspects of cohabitation, be it with
conspecifics or with heterospecific life
forms, are not taken into consideration.
Many predatory fishes, for example, are
completely peaceful towards both their
own kind andother fishes as long as they
don't represent food.Meanwhile someex-
clusively herbivorous species are regular
tyrants in theaquarium,and tolerateneit-
her conspecificsnor other fisheswitha si-
milarwayof life in theirvicinity.Exampleof
these include numerous surgeonfishes
(
Acanthurus
) in themarine aquarium, and
in the freshwater aquarium the lovely
mouthbrooders of the genus
Tropheus
fromLakeTanganyika inAfrica.
Tropheus
Although a some species of this genus are
among themost popular cichlids from the
greatAfricanrift lakesandone formoranot-
her is almost always available in the aqua-
rium trade,nogenerally acceptedpopular
namehasbeenestablished for these fishes.
As in thecaseof thePlaty (
Xiphophorusma-
culatus
),whosepopular name is an abbre-
viation of the older, now invalid, genus
name
Platypoecilius
, aquarists discussing
Tropheus
cichlids refer to "Moorii" (for
Tro-
pheusmoorii
)or "Duboisi" (for
Tropheusdu-
boisi
).There areprobably some13 species
of
Tropheus
inLakeTanganyika,divided into
around120 known subspecies or local va-
riants (Schupke,2003).But only six species
havebeenscientificallydescribed (
Tropheus
annectens,T.brichardi,T.duboisi,T.kasabae,T.
Cichlids
