The History of the Guppy

Guppies exist not only in Japan but also in many countries, don't they? Why?

I’ll tell you the reason why guppies have spread all over the world.

The homes of the guppy are in blackish water areas in the northern part of South America such as Guiana, Venezuela and Trinidad. But now they live in the tropics and the subtropical zones all over the world such as Latin America, the Hawaiian Islands and South-East Asia. The reasons why guppies were naturalized is that guppies are kept by people or are released by them in order to get rid of mosquitoes in their area. Also even in Japan's warm climate, guppies are naturalized in and around hot springs and areas of a thermal discharge.
People say that guppies came to Japan in about 1920. But guppies were so expensive that common people couldn’t buy them in those days. Many guppy were kept by common people during times of high economic growth. Having a guppy really came into fashion in the late 1960s, but in the 1970s the trend declined gradually. Later in the mid-1980s that boom came again and it has been continued until now.

That is the history of the guppy, isn’t it? At any rate, guppies live naturally even in Japan. I didn’t know that!

The reason is because some people who had been taking care of guppies as a pet threw them away in the river,
and that's how guppies were naturalized in Japan. Please don’t throw away your pets.