2001.3 - GAR

This is another play-doh factory fish. The thing I particularly like on this fish is the diamond shaped scales in the texture. Real gars have ganoid scales, a primitive kind of scales that are more like an alligator’s skin than like ‘regular’ teleost (most of the fish we think of as fish) scales. This puts the gars in a very ancient group. I had a pet gar when I was in graduate school. I fed it mosquito fish that I scooped from a pond on the Duke golf course. I named all the little fish Olaf, after a classmate. The gar, which was only a half-inch in diameter, and about seven inches long, would eat about six Olafs in one meal. Olaf was unhappy about his namesakes.