Chinese magician's goldfish trick sparks controversy

Animal rights activists in China are furious with magician Fu Yandong who performs the trick seen above in which he directs goldfish to swim in formations. He was meant to encore the trick today during a Lunar New Year holiday TV program but China Central Television cancelled the performance in light of the controversy. From AFP:

However, a separate regional broadcaster said magician Fu Yandong would perform the controversial trick again on Thursday night -- and reveal its secret so as to silence his critics.

Animal rights activists cried foul over the stunt, saying Fu had likely fed the fish magnets -- or implanted them in the fish -- so they could be dragged around their tank from underneath.

They said the trick amounted to animal cruelty...

Fu has so far refused to reveal the secret.

"My fish," he wrote on his microblog, are "living happily".

"China magic fish trick sparks outrage"

• [Something Is Fishy]

  I would give more importance to the human rights violations!!!

  I would too.

  Meantime, I wonder, how’d he do that trick.

  I suspect magnets. I doubt fish training (which makes me think of “fish schools.” Tee hee.) Lasers just sounds silly and anyway is disrespectful of sharks with frickin laser beams. Perhaps there is a switch to plastic fish somehow when the camera pans away? Many possibilities…

• [Ugly Canuck]

  From what I understand, the peoples of that part of the world have long had a special relationship with goldfish. They were the first to keep them as domestic pets, were they not?

  Note to self: look at materials for a history of aquaculture around the world….

• [chumpmeat]

  I believe they’re being pulled on fine threads.

  At times they’re practically limp – not swimming under their own power.

  A very fine thread could be hidden by careful lighting and foreknowledge of camera placement – misdirection. The puppeteer’s controlling moves are similarly concealed.

  Each pair of fish move as a unit, and no ‘crossing of the streams’ occurs – no fish in a pair is separated from its partner by another fish.

  • [Scixual]

    Microfine, invisible threads are a staple in sleight-of-hand tricks. Heck, most fishing line is invisible under water. Rubber fish with a little bit of wiggle from some clever mechanism would work just fine.

    The trick was probably not designed to be watched and re-watched on video.

• [cmuwriter]

  Those fish are pretty nonplussed about it, if it really is magnets. I wouldn’t worry too much about them, they seem really relaxed. I think China should focus on the kitten stomping videos and the massive human rights violations before they target the goldfish guy. Just my two cents.

• [genre slur]

  Many presumptions going on here — quasi-reasonable skepticism with no actual evidence. The assertion stands that the gentleman has somehow simply trained the organisms in question to alter their behaviour by way of visual (IE light/shadow) cues.

  • [Something Is Fishy]

    Many presumptions going on here

    Including your quasi-reasonable presumption with no actual evidence. My presumption is, he found a way that doesn’t involve training fish, but instead employs sleight of hand.

    How might someone achieve this effect with sleight of hand, I wonder…

    • [genre slur]

      It’s an assertion, not a presumption.
      The assertion stands upon not requiring any phenomena outside of light/shadow cues. Or as you put it, ‘sleight of hand’.

      • [Something Is Fishy]

        It’s an assertion, not a presumption.

        That reminds me of another word! Pedagogue.

        • [genre slur]

          Exactly ;)
          Just expressing the ‘dagnabbit-simple’ position. Always fun in these threads!

        • [Methusedalot]

          A pedagogue is a teacher, you are thinking of pendant. A pedant is a person who is overly concerned with formalism and precision, or who makes a show of their learning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedant

        • [Methusedalot]

          There is a test in post #61 for pedants.

        • [Something Is Fishy]

          you are thinking of pendant

          Actually … I was thinking of pedagogue. Pedagogue isn’t just a teacher, it carries shades of dogmatic pedant!

          Anyhoo.

          Word stuff aint why I’m here.

          What I want to know is, how’d he do the fish trick! I’m willing to believe trained fish. But I admit skepticism, because it doesn’t sound like it really is the simplest explanation, as some here argue. I suspect there’s an easier way, using traditional magician-type sleight of hand skills (as opposed to long months, presumably, spent fish-training).

• [phenocopy]

  I’m not worried about the fish, but that woman’s pantsuit should be enough to cancel the second showing.

• [Rajio]

  I don’t know if controversy is the right word.

• [Anonymous]

  reminds me of the celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county.

• [Anonymous]

  Um… I’m not sure that the fish are even real… they could be some form of rubber that is moving with the motion of the water…

• [Suburbancowboy]

  That was interesting, but the video was so long, that I am going to be behind schedule with my plans to liberate a flea circus.

• [Stooge]

  It seems implausible that the fish have been fed magnets as that would just make the fish clump together.
  A magnet on the outside makes more sense (even without an iron-rich diet). Aren’t most fish supposed to be able to detect electric and magnetic fields?

  • [Sapa]

    Probably live food stuck on to magnets

• [Anonymous]

  I’m feeding magnets to my fish right now!

• [Lucifer]

  This isn’t really about the relative comfort of the fish here. It’s about what this activity says about US as human beings. This is about the principle that it’s okay to subjugate animals to the point where sticking magnets in them and dragging them around is palatable entertainment to us. That’s what I find distasteful. We have established we rule over the animal kingdom. We eat animals, use them for our needs, wear their skins, have them do our labor. But this – this is just barbaric and base.

  • [Alvis]

    My cat hates it when I strap a harness on him and drag him around, but I still do it. Same difference.

  • [EH]

    This is about the principle that it’s okay to subjugate animals to the point where sticking magnets in them and dragging them around is palatable entertainment to us. That’s what I find distasteful.

    Since the secret to the trick is contained entirely in your imagination, does that mean you find the products of your own brain distasteful? They have people who can help with that, btw.

• [Anonymous]

  I see beams of light on the fish that don’t look characteristic of normal studio lighting. I’m guessing lasers.

  Seems like he did a bad job hiding his other trick of “shoving” the table cloth under the fish tank.

• [Grahamers2002]

  I, for one, would like to welcome our new Chinese Goldfish Army overlords.

• [Scixual]

  dear world:

  Just because you don’t understand how a magic trick is performed doesn’t mean your best guess (something to do with magnets, maybe?) is right.

  I have been fortunate enough to be privy to the way a few interesting tricks are done. My best guesses were invariably far more complicated than the reality.

  It’s an art.

  Also: grow up.

  • [Something Is Fishy]

    @scixual: how do you think the effect is achieved?

    • [Scixual]

      I’m inclined toward clever robotics, myself.

      • [Something Is Fishy]

        I’m inclined toward clever robotics, myself.

        Do robotic fish dream of electric eels? I wonder.

• [Flaminica]

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you on the mouse organ ‘The Bells of St Mary’s’. Thank you.”

  • [merreborn]

    Mouse organ? Pfft. Call me when you’ve moved up to a real instrument like the [cat piano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_organ)

  • [merreborn]

    Mouse organ? Pfft. Call me when you’ve moved up to a real instrument like the cat piano

    (mods, kindly delete my previous comment which I accidentally composed in markdown)

• [sixfngers]

  on the second trick where he his holding the frame. those are fake fingers. they dont move at all the entire time he is holding the frame. Especially noticable when he pulls the frame away from the tank. the fingers dont even flex their grip and the pivot of the wrist seems off.

• [Anonymous]

  I think he really did train them by rewarding them at proper moments. Their cue is the shadows of his hands. I think he was just repetative enough with his hand formations to trigger a command within the fish.

• [Michael Smith]

  Magnets. The front of each fish hugs the bottom. The fish seem to surge forward then stop, exactly like a metal target being dragged by a magnet below the surface it is on. Plenty of ways to do it but a person could get inside the table by crawling from the back of the stage or through a trap door. Servos are a possibility too.

• [kmoser]

  He controls them with lasers. Goldfish with frickin’ laser beams.

• [nest1234]

  It’s clear to me that these aren’t real fish, so don’t get all uptight. But the trick only works if you buy that they are fish (it’s like the lion’s roar in Carter vs the Devil). Because the thought of putting magnets in real fish is so preposterous that we can’t believe it. Ask yourself, why did he cover the table with that cloth? Just a magician’s flourish? Hardly. One (or two) confederates snuck down there after he did that, controlling the rubber fish with strong magnet bars–two in each hand. The table would be thick enough to conceal an apparatus that could move magnetic fish around in obvious or random patterns, so he didn’t need to show/hide the undertable if a person didn’t sneak down there. Count how many were ever moving independently at a time–it suggests two confederates. Maybe they have a camera, or more likely the bottom was translucent enough to track the location and colors of the fish visually from below.

  The real trick is showing the audience the fish swimming ‘at random’ initially, so we think they are real fish.

• [Anonymous]

  What a disgusting and inhumane practice.

  I have to stop typing now and eat my salmon-roe sushi, then back to work jailing Tibetan women for having two children.

  • [teapot]

    I have to stop typing now and eat my salmon-roe sushi, then back to work jailing Tibetan women for having two children.

    Wow. Just wow.

    I love the internet. It has given everyone a medium to complain about x,y &/or z without having to actually know what they should be incensed over.

    @16: We likely agree on China’s shocking animal/human rights record, but sushi is Japanese and AFAIK there is not a conservation problem with consumption of “salmon-roe”. You are probably thinking of Bluefin Tuna which is endangered and a large majority of the worldwide catch goes to sushi production.

    What you should be bitching about is the ridiculousness of Traditional Chinese Medicine which, without proven effectiveness, drives up demand for endangered animal products to a point where a product such as rhino-horn is now more valuable than gold by weight.

    On topic: I tend to think the fish that the magician ‘controls’ are inanimate… the fins do not move *at all* apart from flapping around when being dragged through the water. I’m betting on some sort of switch illusion.

    • [benher]

      He’s not totally in the wrong. Sushi is consumed by several countries all over the world, including the Chinese… whose illegal fishing practices completely dwarf their often criticized Japanese counterparts.

      But yeah, he’s wrong for not pointing out that the one child policy is not limited to Tibetans, though they’re certainly subject to a specific brand of cruelty courtesy of the fun loving PRC.

      You’re spot on regarding “Kanpo” though.

      Chinese “medicine’s” unchecked lust for ground up tiger bones and all manner of endangered animals is detestable.

      • [Something Is Fishy]

        he’s wrong for not pointing out that the one child policy is not limited to Tibetans

        Filed under “B” for “Break, give me a.”

        The poster is “wrong” for not writing a full disquisition on China’s one-child policy — in a sarcastic comment posted on an item about a controversial magic trick involving goldfish?

        • [Anonymous]

          Being pedantic, but actually the one-child policy in China is for Han nationals. Ethnic minority groups (such as Tibetans) can have more than one child.

• [Anonymous]

  He’s clearly using Tesla’s teleportation machine for the trick with the goldfish in the picture frame!

• [Anonymous]

  Fish trapped in a tank swimming in perfect order, a nice metaphor for Chinese society under the communist regime.

  As for the trick I’m suspicious that the table had its underside hidden behind a cloth.

• [Anonymous]

  I think the_real story here_is that there are animal rights activists in China! huh, what? Have you seen the food markets there? (Before I get flamed for being racist, I should disclose that I am Chinese.)

• [chroma]

  Trick 1: the cloth under the horizontal tank. The cloth springs out from the sides of the table when the magician releases a catch. He then hides the real cloth in back of the table.

  The cloth then disguises what’s going on under the table.

  Trick 2: the marching fish. Come on people. The fish are fake. No fish training necessary. They’re manipulated from below by assistants by magnets or strings, as suggested above. Watch how they don’t move most of the time. The animal rights protesters are what sells it, much like Criswell’s tuxedo.

  Trick 3: Fish from the painting into the bowl. The fish is concealed in his sleeve, probably in a plastic bag. The fish in the painting is just a sticker. The magician is dexterous and very good at sleight of hand. The hand is truly quicker than the eye.

  Tricks 4&5: Fish appearing in the big tank. The big tank has hidden compartments which release the fish when necessary.

  How’s that?

• [EeyoreX]

  There is a stark cultural difference at work here.
  You see, in most parts of China it´s still considered ok to do stuff like THIS to fish:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WzQewf5puA

  So forgive me if i call bullshit on the alleged outrage. If any chinese animal rights activists actually gave a toss about this guy, they seriously need to get their priorities in better order.

  More likly, the “outrage” is a media stunt to give this guys publicity for when he reveals the trick, “Penn&Teller style”. More power to him.

• [Anonymous]

  So I guess the activists don’t believe in magic.

• [DJBudSonic]

  Having kept and raised exotic goldfish, moors and the like I can tell you whatever he is doing the fish do seem happy enough. These fish can have buoyancy problems yet they move about in the tray well enough; except that one time the front fish looks a little ‘pulled’. But it’s a magical effect. At least it is new and interesting. Magic has been in a decline for so long now that I am happy to see something unique like this. This is indeed the least of China’s worries. I just wish I could understand more of his patter. And for any potential animal cruelty folks out there, the large tank finale is about 20% of the shipping density for commercial fish – have you ever seen a feeder fish shipping container? This man’s fish are living large compared to what they have been through.

• [Anonymous]

  arduino inside? ;)

• [krispyD]

  I can tell by the pixels.

• [polossatik]

  If it has magnets and is a sketch, then it needs an Arduino..
  now where is that “magic_fish.pde” file again?

• [Anonymous]

  well, it’s pretty clear that they’re not swimming voluntarily — in one case one fish is swimming sort of chest-first, which is nearly impossible “in nature,” even if you overlook the lack of moving fins or tails…

• [ill lich]

  They certainly don’t seem to be “swimming”, as they are dragging their fins through the water rather than using them to propel themselves.

  I also find it hard to believe animal rights activists would have any sway in China.

  • [Trent Hawkins]

    Why?

    Animal rights groups are far more keen on working with tyrannical dictators.

• [Rezorrand]

  *cough* It’s possible to train the goldfish and it’s been recently scientifically proven that gold fish have a pretty good memory up to 3 months back */cough*

  http://www.tothefish.com/training-your-goldfish

  I don’t think there’s any trickery involved. I’ve seen bunch of other videos where fish have been swimming in formations in a bigger tank (without alleged strings). I think everyone’s just overreacting.

• [Tatsuma]

  Hhmmm, China and animal rights eh? This is the same place where in parts of the far west of the country you can enjoy such delicacies as donkey meat, cut directly from the sides of the living animal!!!

  • [Nicky G]

    I never had any inclination to visit China, UNTIL NOW.

• [Anonymous]

  The tablecloth is a red herring.

  • [robulus]

    “The tablecloth is a red herring.”

    A red herring that is being mistreated.

• [Anonymous]

  I must admit that I do not understand Mandarin, despite having heard quite a bit of it. “Ba bidda ba de ba ba” is a new one to me, though. Magic phrase, perhaps?

• [Anonymous]

  This heralds the sign of the Apocofish….

• [empathy44]

  I’ve seen something like this before–fish trained to follow the shadow of a hand movement. But, there are moments where they look like they are being controlled somehow, especially the last shot of them in the shallow tank. Fish can be trained. One of my fishes learned on his own that if he stuck his mouth up out of the water I’d drop some food right in. Now two of them do it.

• [Anonymous]

  Given that this is possible through training (and by no means new or unique) I’m not sure if there’s more to the story than we’re told.

  If they’re suggesting magnets I’d assume they have a good argument, either that or they don;t spend much time researching the alternatives …

  With no training at all I can drag my fingers down the side of my fish tank and the whole bunch of them will clump up and follow my fingers (it means feeding time, and they like to nom), that’s a variety of breeds and sizes as well.

• [Something Is Fishy]

  a possible technical problem with the magnet talk: wouldn’t magnets strong enough to steer the fish also pull them down against the bottom of the tank?

• [Anonymous]

  Wouldn’t magnets pull the fish right to the bottom of the tank?

• [Anonymous]

  Look closely at the “bottom” of the tank especially after the fish start moving in formation and you get a overhead view, zoom in or go full screen. Did you see that bubble? Oh, look there is one at each spot the fish swim to, it is a food reward, the only thing he is doing is training Pavlovian goldfish. They have food withheld for a time before the trick is preformed and then the food is used to direct them where to go by a person or people under the table, why else would there be such a show about the red table cloth?

  • [Sapa]

    I saw the bubble in the picture and I think maybe magnets or something under the tank at the beginning. When you consider the amazing things that came out of China, Chinese in general are shockingly far behind the rest of us in our love for our fellow earth-beings. They dunk cats alive in boiling water for the fur! The bubbles at the end almost knocked the fish out and they were huddled away from them.

• [Anonymous]

  My money is on magnets.

  1. The fish don’t need to have magnets on them just something with iron glued to their underside. They won’t stick together this way.
  2. “but they would stick to the bottom.” So what? Can you tell the difference if they are being dragged along the bottom or not? Notice the tank is shallow 2″ deep. The fish clearly are not swimming. Notice how a couple struggle at times.
  3. The bottom of the tank is translucent so the assistant hiding under there can see the fish with the light above them.
  Of course someone is under the table or there would be no need for the curtain.

  Fish with a small tab of iron glued to their bellies and painted the same color seems like the simplest solution to me.

• [Julien Couvreur]

  I see, attaching a horse to a carriage or a mill is ok, but attaching a fish to a magnet to limit its freedom of motion is not…

• [Something Is Fishy]

  Being pedantic, but actually the one-child policy in China is …
  

  So how do you think the magician did the fish trick?

• [howdini]

  Fish are assholes, and deserve to be subjugated to the will of humans.

• [chroma]

  According to my wife, he goes on about his father’s father (ba ba).

• [Anonymous]

  If we work hard enough we can either ban or explain every piece of magic or mystery in this world… great. Isn’t seeing a magician about not knowing the answer to how the trick is performed? Can’t we take joy from mystery anymore? In our reality TV culture we feel like we are entitled to every secret and in so doing rob ourselves of a lot of the beauty that the world has to offer in the process. In any event, the quantum world is full of delicious unknowables with their tricks impossible to ban and the particles unlikely to ever reveal their secrets, so I suppose if people want to spend their time harassing an entertainer for trying to entertain they can go ahead and spoil all the tricks that were intended to delight us. I’ll look to the electron for my wonderment.

• [Anonymous]

  I thought it was pretty obvious that he’s using laser light pointers. You can see the red lights in the video.

• [Anonymous]

  There is no need for animal rights activists to be furious with Fu Yandong because I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

  GWB

• [Something Is Fishy]

  Let’s try to figure out the magic, shall we?

  I’ll start. Notice the camera pans away during the transition between non-synchronized and synchronized swimming. Why is that, I wonder?

  Here’s a guess: Synchronized fishs aren’t alive. There’s somehow a switch between live fish and magenetized, rubber fish that we aren’t shown.

  Any other ideas??

• [Anonymous]

  I bet he can’t herd cats !

• [fnc]

  Looks ‘shopped, I mean faked. They don’t seem to be self propelled at all times, sometimes appearing to be drug through the water.

  But even the magnet theory has issues.

  How could something (or someone) under the tank know for sure that the correct fish was getting caught on the correct magnet at the beginning of the performance? They appear to be swimming about at random until it begins.

  How can the force be strong enough to pull the fish without just sticking it to the bottom of the tank? I guess that’s an issue of tuning the relative strength of the magnets very closely to the buoyancy of the fish.

  I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that it would have to overcome some interesting problems.

  As far as animal rights, dragging a few goldfish around in a shallow tank of water barely matches the things whole industries do every day to which the majority never objects. I’m wondering if the “controversy” has been cooked up to gain some attention, but I’m willing to believe there are people out there who would froth at the mouth about this.

• [chgoliz]

  I’m also wondering why animal rights activists in China are concerned about goldfish, considering how many other animal rights abuses there are.

  And if they’re going to worry about these goldfish, why concentrate on the ones swimming around rather than the one that is taken out of the water and “smashed” into a painting?

• [tobiasaurusrex]

  It’s not amazing that the fish follow any magnet, it’s that they can seemingly ignore the effects that any such magnets inside them would have between each other. Or, that this man has a magnet that can act individually on magnets that seemingly have zero attraction/repulsion to each other.

  Maybe because there are no magnets.

  Watch again, you’ll see some laser or LED lights flashing and reflecting off of the surface of the water.

  The ignorance of the activists outweights any potential cruelty actually involved. Case closed.

  • [Something Is Fishy]

    Case closed.

    @tobiasaurusrex: Whoops!

    What if the fish has a slug of steel in it, and the magnet is below? Magnets don’t have to be in the fish for magnetism to work.

    Case un-closed?

    • [tobiasaurusrex]

      “What if the fish has a slug of steel in it, and the magnet is below?” – you

      “I suspect magnets.” – you again.

      As you say, they must have iron in them, and magnets below, which is why they’re pulled down to the bottom of the container, and then dragged along the floor of it like so much flopping, scaly iron ore.

      It’s the lights. No magnets, no iron.

• [GeekMan]

  As Stooge mentioned, if the goldfish really had magnets in them, they’d just clump together. As usual, a little critical scientific thinking saves us from the reactionary mob.

  If I recall, goldfish are actually pretty easy to condition and thus quite trainable with the right methods. Hence the goldfish training kits readily available:

  http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/adca/

• [piminnowcheez]

  I saw this same trick a few years ago on a Japanese teevee show. Don’t know if it was the same “magician” or not, but the music was a lot goofier and the show’s host hollered a lot and laughed hysterically. You know, Japanese teevee.

  Anyway, I’ve done some behavioral science with goldfish and other fish species, and I can tell you a couple of things:

  1. It is possible to train goldfish, but it’s a time-consuming pain in the ass.
  2. It is not possible to train fish to move through the water without actually swimming, which is what’s happening here: these are clearly live fish (watch carefully and you can see occasional struggling, tail-flicking, etc.) But they are moving without the characteristic sinusoidal movements that make fish go. They are not swimming. They are being dragged, through some mechanism or another, through the water.
  3. I wouldn’t swear to it, but my vote is magnets: the shallowness of the water prevents them from breaking away from the bottom and being free of a magnetic force originating below. All they need to prevent them from clumping together is that the magnetic attraction from below is stronger than any magnetic attraction between. Whatever is attached to/inside the fish need not be magnetic at all, it merely needs to be subject to magnetic attraction. So, fish food with iron pellets mixed in would do the trick.

  Also, Stooge @10:
  Aren’t most fish supposed to be able to detect electric and magnetic fields?
  No. Some are specialized for this, but not most. And not goldfish.

• [BDiamond]

  Have you all forgotten something? They’re not fish.
  They’re SEA KITTENS.
  http://features.peta.org/PETASeaKittens/

• [Anonymous]

  First, I think they are real fish. There’s a time when one of the fish breaks the surface of the water. It looks real.

  Second, they certainly look unnatural at some points.

  Third, did anyone else notice the red reflections on the water? I think the laser guy was right & they may be conditioned to follow a laser shooting from above.

  Fourth, it may also be magnets underneath without attaching or injecting magnets into the fish. As someone mentioned above, they may be sympathetic to magnetism, enough such that, with conditioning, they feel & follow magnets.

  Finally, that thing he does at the beginning with the red cloth… That’s got to be for some reason, some diversionary tactic or something… Anyone?

  I do hope they post the follow up.

  Peter

• [Exo]

  I’ve kept fish for 25 years and have been in the hobby professionally for 15 can say, without ANY reservation, that these fish:

  1)are real goldfish.
  2)are not swimming on their own; ornamental goldfish are very clumsy swimmers and are completely incapable of the movements they are doing here.
  3)are likely anesthetized to some degree. Their gillplates are moving very slowly, and they hardly ever paddle with their pectoral fins (a ubiquitous goldfish trait).
  4)are negatively buoyant (thus the very shallow water so you can’t see them sink like a stone).
  5)are not trained to perform this trick. This trick is completely beyond the training abilities of all but the smartest animals, let alone a fish. Fish are really awesome animals, but brainiacs, they aren’t.

  • [genre slur]

    If training is out the window, have you any knowledge of the effect that various electrical fields have on fish? The movement does seem to jar at pivotal moments. This got me thinking about frequency/amplification change. Though if magnets, the jarring may indicate the movement of a mechanism. What about sound?

• [Anonymous]

  if its magnets they are just going to poop it out! I would give more importance to the Human right violations!!!

• [penguinchris]

  I’m a bit late to comment, but those saying lasers… come on, look more closely. The red reflections are from red-gelled studio lights. They don’t move (except with the wave action), and don’t look anything like lasers.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s interesting to note that the majority of people who watch magic tricks without actively participating in the creation of the trick immediately cling to the closest thing they can relate to, the “Occam’s Razor” of stage acts.

  When I was a kid I intended to pursue magic professionally (that is, until I learned of the time, effort, and cost of making it in the biz) and every talent show that came around I’d put on an act. Easily 90% of classmates and parents that would come up to me to talk about my act mentioned magnets.

  I’ve never even seen a real magic trick that involved magnets that wasn’t some dumb “fool your friends” kit.

  That said, most magic acts to everything possible to avoid the Razor, it’s shoddy magic, and if the way it works IS the way that it appears to the layman to work, the whole thing comes apart at the seams.

  That mussing about with the table? all diversion, if it was actually where the effect was taking place the cloth would have already been hanging, and not quite as low as it does, as not to draw attention to itself. a rig for making magnets work in that amount of space wouldn’t even need a skirt on the table to be undetectable by the audience.

• [Anonymous]

  this is just reward based training, there was a bit about this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjnUiyf5YJU in the news a year or so ago

  -sadly no magnetic fish with lazer beams…

• [Something Is Fishy]

  Right after he drops the red cloth he can be seen fiddling with something black behind the table.

  inn-ter-esss-ting … (strokes chin )

• [Mister44]

  It couldn’t be magnets. Anything powerful enough to drag them around the tank from the bottom would be powerful enough for two fish to stick together when getting close.

  It looked like there was light or lasers shining down. Maybe they are Cylon fish. This is how it begins. So say we all.

• [IWood]

  What’s a microblog? Like Twitter? Maybe smaller, like 25 characters?

  • [Micah]

    Yes. Twitter itself is blocked in China, but there are some Twitter clones and similar short-form blogging services that are extremely popular.

  • [travtastic]

    Welcome to the Nanoblogosphere.

• [Jason Rizos]

  Yeah, magnets. I’ll refrain from an ICP reference and just say the fish probably don’t mind.

• [Anonymous]

  Did anyone else notice that every time there is change from random movement to synchronized or back, the camera zooms in just enough so you can’t see the fish for a split second?

  • [Something Is Fishy]

    Did anyone else notice that every time there is change from random movement to synchronized or back, the camera zooms in just enough so you can’t see the fish for a split second?

    Yes (see comment 31). I bet there’s something about the transition from synchronized to non-synchronized that exposes the trick.

• [zapan]

  F*cking magnet fishes, how do they work ?

• [bodenski]

  Those protests against sawing women in half worked.