I think my WalMart sells Betta Imbellis females?

[TheCheese909]

I've always wondered why the females at my local WalMart always looked so... not pretty? I don't now if that's the right way to put it, but all the other females i've seen at PetSmart & PetCo all look so pretty, and many are built with their curves, the CTs and VTs, they all look so nice..

This WalMart sells more "snake" like built girls, just thin tube like females who are often brown, dark green almost blackish looking with very short fins with bits of red and green in them. I've always wondered why their females looked so band while their males usually were quite pretty looking.

I recently bought a Betta book from PetSmart, it's an Animal Planet book i'm sure many have seen. I was looking through it and came across these two pages filled with photos called "The Betta Gallery" showing all kinds of different Betta fish. While examining each photo I found "Betta Imbellis" and even though it's a photo of a male, he looks exactly like the females at WalMart. So I Googled photos and i'll be damned if I didn't find photos of females that look identical to the ones at WalMart.

I currently don't have photos of any of these girls but here are Google pics that look just like the ones I see there all the time.





this one is a male, but he looks like the females I see there as well, color wise




Does anyone else's WalMart sell these Bettas? I'll try and get photos whenever the next time I go in. They also occasionally get in VT females or what appear to be King females, as their size would suggest.

[Mo]

They are wild type colored bettas most likely..

[nel3]

ive seen 30 or so female bettas in 5g tank, most were super stressed ie light borwn and blak stripes.

[LittleBettaFish]

Yeah highly unlikely they are imbellis females. They would probably be young wild-type females. You see them all the time here in fish and pet stores.

[TheCheese909]

Thats what i thought too and they very easily could be. I've seen plenty of wild type females and that's what we have always called these, it's just these females are all built differently then the wild types i've always seen which is why i thought they might be something different.

[Mo]

As in long bodies? Different tail types have different attributes and this may be the difference or it could even be a factor of age

[ChoclateBetta]

Same with guppies wild type colors pop up all the time. I love the fish I so wish I had one. I would be surprised if Walmart managed to keep a different betta species alive they struggle with the Splendens.

[toad]

Intersting! I got two females from WM, but they didn't look like that. Cali (who I still have) has a peach colored body and red fins, and Delilah (who passed away) was iridescent purple :)

I like the ones you posted though, I think they're pretty!

[ChoclateBetta]

I like there color too. I have read domestic bettas were hybridized. Maybe they are hybrids that exhibit more ancestor charastics.