Knowledge and understanding is always important.

Yesterday, I wrote on the noble deed of releasing fish, frogs and birds from captivity. Done rightly or wrongly, the intention, which is all important, is certainly admirable.

However, the action can be improved upon with full knowledge and understanding of the birds, frogs and fish that we release. I have often seen good Buddhist who unintentionally cause pain, suffering and death to the creatures they hope to save.

When it comes to fish, there have been people who release goldfish and long-tailed angels into the rivers where other creatures await to get a meal out of them. You see, goldfish have fins that do not give them any chance for survival in the wild. In fact, their features are mostly man-made. Goldfish originate from the carp. Their body became bulky, their fins long, their tails not exactly what nature would want them to have. That is why they move the way they do, wagging their way forward slowly, obviously too slow to escape any predator. To put them in a river is similar to putting a human among some lions in an arena. It is certain death.

Another thing about fish is the way such fish are released, be it into a well, pond, river or acquarium. The temperature of the water holding the fish may be warm while the river water may be cold. When there is such a difference in the temperature at the time the fish is transferred, the fish would receive a temperature shock which could lead to death in a few days' time. This is one of the reasons people who release their fish from a plastic bag of warm water into the cold water of their acquarium find their fish sick and dying after just a few days. The right thing to do is to put the plastic bag of fish into the acquarium or river water for about half an hour to have the water in the bag become similar to the temperature of the water in the acquarium or the river. In this way, the fish will be moving from one place to another whitout receiving any temperature shock and so, will be safe. You see, knowledge and understanding of such matters do make a difference.

When it comes to birds, we ought to get those birds which have a market for them. However, most Buddhist buy birds such as the ordinary sparrows and other dull grey feathered birds which interest nobody except such Buddhists. It simply means that such birds would never have been captured by anyone in the first place, and therefore need no release, if such Buddhist do not purchase them in order to have them released back to the wild.

To understand better, perhaps I ought to go into some details on how such birds are usually caught. The bird-catchers would tie a long wide net in the path of such birds, then send such bird into flight into the net by frightening them. The frightened birds dashed right into the net, getting caught by it, and in the process, many break their necks or are fatally hurt. Since nobody wants to rear such dull coloured birds, no one would have taken the trouble to catch them thus. If there are nobody to purchase them so as to release them, there would have been no market for them and they would have been safe in the first place.

There are also birds which are no longer wild as they have been bred in captivity for so long, away from their natural habitat since the day they were born and therefore do not know where to get or hunt for their food or water. Such birds, the African finches and the canary for example, would not know where to go, how to look for food they have been used to and water if ever they are released. They would most probably die a slow painful death as they search in vain for familiar food. Such birds may be so familiar with the sight of a cat that they may move towards it.

Fortunately, almost every frogs that are release come from the wild and therefore, it is perfectly alright to release them into the wild again.