Interesting Creature: The Fascinating Origin of Betta Fish

Apr 26, 2026 Features / Columnists, Interesting Creatures in Guyana, News

(Kaieteur News) – Betta fish are among the most popular and beautiful pet fish in the world, but that wasn’t always so. The genus Betta contains more than 73 recognized species, but the fish most people are familiar with is Betta splendens, or Siamese fighting fish.

Wild betta fish are a dull greyish-green with short fins; nothing like the spectacularly colored, long-finned beauties of today! Through selective breeding, a wide range of colors and fin types have been developed, including: veil, delta, halfmoon, crowntail, double tail and many more.

Betta keeping began in Thailand (formerly Siam) over 150 years ago. Children collected these territorial fish in rice paddies and would place them together to watch them spar, hence the name Siamese Fighting Fish. Soon, betting on these contests became commonplace.

The King of Siam recognized their popularity and decided to regulate and tax them. In 1840, the King gave some fish to a man who, in turn, gave them to Danish physician, Dr. Theodore Cantor. The doctor bred and studied them, later writing a scientific paper that identified them as Macropodus pugnax. When it was discovered that there already was a fish by that name, Charles Tate Regan renamed them Betta splendens, meaning “beautiful warrior”, a name that stands to this day. Bettas were first imported into France and Germany in the 1890s, and Mr. Frank Locke of San Francisco, CA, brought the first bettas into the United States in 1910.

Americans sometimes mis-pronounce the name as “bay-tuh” after the second letter in the Greek alphabet, however, it is believed that these fish were actually named after the ancient Asian Bettah warrior tribe – pronounced “bet-tah”. (Think “My fish is bettah than yours”!) In Thailand, they are called “plakat”, which means “biting fish”.

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Betta Fish, Betta splendens, Interesting Creature, Siamese fighting fish

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