Koi Rape

I hate this time of the year. Generally, the cold season ushers in rape season for my kois, or Japanese ornamental carp. I have 9 kois in my pond (they say that’s the lucky number to have), and when I bought them, they were too young to sex, so I had no idea how many were male and how many were female. It isn’t until their 1st mating season, when you see the males brutally “raping” the females. I know that rape is a strong word, but if you see the ensuing devastation, there is no other word for it. I’ve lost many females during this maniacal season. They end up bruised, concussed, bleeding, and sometimes dead. The males chase them relentlessly, slamming them into the cement walls of the pond, and they do this over and over and over again. Worse, they do this dastardly deed under the cover of darkness, since they mate at night. You just hear the sickening thuds of the poor females, scales rammed against concrete. The next day you see the injured females floating on their sides, gasping what could be their final breaths of life, while the males are already hungry and restless, eager to feed. Hmph. It just makes me wonder why sex is so inherently violent. There’s a species of nurse shark wherein the males clamp onto the females by biting a fin while they inseminate them. They get so violent that it’s common for the males to actually kill the females in the process, wasting their precious shark-seed on a carcass. Even the oh-so-friendly dolphins have a dark side so far removed from our “Flipper” image of them. I saw a video of larger males sodomizing smaller ones, probably using male rape as a dominance tool. I guess the very nature of sex involves an “intrusion”, or a “forced entry”, and its impetus is an instinct as basic as hunger or thirst. And many people engorge themselves on sex as they would on a juicy burger, munching away and damn the consequences! But back to the koi, I managed to save every single dying female by raising the salt levels of the water. I know, I know, before anyone shouts “paksiw!”, adding lots of salt is how you treat moribund kois. I hope the mating season is over for this year. Until next year, when you can almost hear them shout, “koi wag po, wag po!”

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