4 Wild Guppy F

This looks like a real wild type of guppy. (but dead).It is a government photo, so I am guessing that this is a mosquito fish - any fish put into ponds, lakes, swamps, or whatever, to eat mosquito larva. Most anything that eats mosquito larva is worth a second look.

This is a female. You can tell by the under belly fins, but you can also tell by casual glance. The male has a more pencil shaped body, the female fish, which is usually pregnant, has a deep belly. The female is larger than the male, and heavier in type, but the males are more active. (In the wild types!)

Gender is an important study in fish. Many fish can change gender. Some fish, the eel?, all start life out as females, and then the old ones change into males. If an eel lives long enough it will both give birth, and later, sire offspring. But most fish are born male or female, but even those fish, in some species (I have seen it in swordtails) will change gender if they are kept without a member of the opposite sex.

It is said that polluted water in our own stream and lakes often kills fish, but sometimes, it doesn't kill them, it causes them to become both male & female at the same time, or to grow extra limbs and mutated forms. (Maybe the show breeders are just gearing up for our own future world?)

But this photo is of a normal female guppy. Although her eye doesn't look good, that isn't exactly inherited. The males fish have all of the pretty colors.