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OEBT: The shrimp with no fear?


waffle

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My OEBTs seem 100% fearless. I'm moving them to a different tank and they were so easy to net because they don't actually run AWAY from the net, they swim up to it and try to explore it. They also like to attack me if I try to do anything inside their tank. Is this a general OEBT or tiger thing? 

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I'm not 100% sure with pure Tigers but my love affair with F1 Tibees was for that very reason. They explored the tanks , even got out and went walk about until I sealed all exits. They are way more active than the other varieties and have fights over food or just because one is sitting where the other one wants to be! I also first witnessed the babies getting flicked away from food by the Tibees.  As F1 Tibees are the first cross of a Tiger and a Bee shrimp I always thought the feistiness came from the Tigers! I just love them and now of course my pure Tigers too but I haven't noticed quite the same behaviour as with my first Tibees

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Ok So the thing is that OEBT are Blind. (hence the orange eyes) Same goes for BTOE or anything with orange eyes.

So they NEED to physically touch most things to explore them/'see' them. This is likely why your OEBT seem fearless. I used to breed OEBT, but I got out of it.

Part of me had a hard time dealing with the ethics of selectively breeding something to ensure it was born blind. I think breeding OEBT with tigers would eventually get to Blue tigers (aka aura blue etc) that still had vision.

 

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Awesome post guys,

 

@LaxLogic, I have been trying to find confirmation on the blindness of the orange eye shrimp in literature. Have you perhaps come across any literature that can shed more light on this for us? The most information that I could come across was that the blindness might be due to the complete lack of rhodopsin in the eyes, but I could not find any literature confirming this a hundred percent that it would result in no vision. I have been doing a few movement experiments outside my tanks and at the moment it looks like they have very poor vision, but not zero vision.

I do also question the ethics of this as and would appreciate any scholarly information on this.

@waffle, I have a whole new respect about the fearlessness of these shrimp and would attribute that to their aggression factor. I had 4 adult tigers shipped to me from a very reputable breeder. One female was very large. When the package arrived, there were only 3 tigers left: they managed to eat a Whole adult shrimp in 2 days! My large tiger female is so aggressive that she beats my ottos over the head when they come near food that she fancies...I feed her meat once a week just in case she tried to eat my cherries..

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I was completely unaware that they might have poor or absent vision! Did oranage eyes originate in captivity or the wild?If in the wild, perhaps they come from environments with low light then perhaps vision isn't that important to them to and mutations causing blindness don't really affect survival much. I'm really interested for more details about it, too.

Yeah definitely my tigers are more aggressive. Tangerine tigers are quite fearless too - I might test whether they're as fearless as OEBT. I've never had them cause proper harm to their tank-mates but I've seen both OEBT and tangs get pretty territorial. The males also seem to get a bit confused about which species they can breed with, and occasionally get a bit excited about native caridina females -_-

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I have read that the shrimp are blind but still need to be convinced of this. Why do they head straight for my hand and sit on it -I guess their sense of smell may be keen. They seem to find their way around the tanks -even new tanks without bumping into things. I would like a definitive answer to that as well. I have a reasonable number of Taitibees with orange eyes -always the Tibee /Tiger pattern and a large number of Black /chocolate Cherries too. If it could be proven they are blind I would make sure I did not use them in any breeding programs. 

 

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Arguably the worlds leading crustacean expert, Chris Lukhaup mentioned in his lecture at Seahorse Aquarium ( 3-part lecture available on YouTube) that they suspect that the Orange eye tigers might be blind, but it does not sound like anyone knows for sure. I have spent a bit of time searching on Google Scholar without success. Where is a crustacean ocular expert when you need one?!

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It would be good to know either way. I was told the orange eye was a recessive gene and unlikely to be passed on to hybrids but I have proved that wrong with many Taitibees with orange eyes - I wasn't believed initially but I sent a good number to the person involved . Without dissection from an eye expert there is no proof that I can find either. 

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  • 1 month later...

also very interested in this outcome as I have discovered one of my cherries with orange eyes.

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  • 2 years later...

Hello!

Sorry to up a 2 years old topic, but does anyone have more info on this?

i started a colony of OEBT, and i would like to know about this too ?

 

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54 minutes ago, sky99 said:

does anyone have more info on this?

Info on what? That OEBT are blind?

I don't think they are blind. Poor eye sight maybe, but certainly not blind. If you sit and watch them move, you will realise they are not blind and do not show signs of stumbling and bumping into things.

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11 hours ago, jayc said:

Info on what? That OEBT are blind?

I don't think they are blind. Poor eye sight maybe, but certainly not blind. If you sit and watch them move, you will realise they are not blind and do not show signs of stumbling and bumping into things.

Hello!

I understand your reasoning, however, considering that they have their antenas in front of them, wouldn't those shrimps be able to sense objects ahed of them?

I think that a valid experiment would be to have two groups :

  1. tigers  as a control group
  2. orange eyes tigers as the test group

The experiment would be to place both groups in similar tanks and expose them to visual stimuli outside of the tank.

That way, they won't be able to sense water mooving or detect with their antennas.

I was thinking about something like having  a light on at the end of the tank and having a dark area on the other side, and see if there

is a statistically significant disparity between both groups behaviour.

Another test would be to have fast moving objects (waving hands for instance) to see if they get scared or not. I think that with fishes i'd be able to detect those who can or can't see that way, however i don't find my shrimps very reactive to visual stimuli behind the glass in general. however, when i put objects that displace water -such as a net- near them, they tend to move away.

For now my only tigers are orange eyes, i'll try to conduct this experiment when i get my tangerine (normal eyed) tigers. I hope that both morphes of this shrimp are genetically close enough for this to be a valid experiment (perfect experiment would be to cross OEBT with BT and have two groups from the offsprings, that would be super close, or the next best thing simply OEBT and BT as test groups)

 

However in case of conclusive results, we not be able to say if they are blind or poorly sighted unless we can find the reaction treshold.

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Something I've wondered as well... can they sense their surroundings kind of like a cat with their whiskers?

It's possible for blind people to still perceive light even if they can't visually see... so I'm not sure how using a light would be effective....  (not saying don't do it, but something to consider in the experiments) I've seen the argument go both ways... if they aren't blind, then why don't they react when you walk by the tank like other shrimp might?

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On 9/4/2018 at 11:39 PM, Zoidburg said:

Something I've wondered as well... can they sense their surroundings kind of like a cat with their whiskers?

It's possible for blind people to still perceive light even if they can't visually see... so I'm not sure how using a light would be effective....  (not saying don't do it, but something to consider in the experiments) I've seen the argument go both ways... if they aren't blind, then why don't they react when you walk by the tank like other shrimp might?

Problem is that i noted that my other shrimps don't seem to react much to my presence either ?

The only shrimps that seem to scare from behind the glass are my babaulti, and it's not all the time either...

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  • 1 month later...

After more observation, i can confirm that they react less to my presence in the tank than both neocaridinas and caridinas babaulti; i have not performed testing for "out of the tank" visual stimulation.

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  • 1 year later...

so, i bump an old forum thread, anyone have info or observation with orange eyes on caridina shrimps ?

from my experience with only 1 shrimp with full orange eye, i'm sure they are blind, i know most of caridina shrimp have not good vision to surrounding, that's why they always try to sense with their legs and antennae, but the full orange eye (because i see some shrimp with orange color on the edge of they eye only, not full orange) look blind, because i see they even can't differentiate the light or when shadowed by something above them.

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12 hours ago, Cleeon said:

i'm sure they are blind, i

We can't confirm this theory with any absolute certainty.  But maybe they are not completely blind and can still detect some light.

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