I was looking at the animal sprites in the Scratch sprite library, and noticed a fishbowl sprite. I think this should be removed, as fishbowls are very dangerous and cruel to fish. Reasons include them being too small, no room for a heater and filter, the bowl shape distorts their vision, among other things.

While you might argue “it’s harmless!”, depictions of fishbowls in the media make kids more likely to assume fishbowls are an okay enclosure for a pet fish, when it isn’t. If someone sees a fishbowl in the sprite library, it’ll further cement the thought that fishbowls are okay.
One could say that they may use the fishbowl sprite in a project explaining why bowls are bad for fish, which is valid, but they could also take the fish sprite and the bowl sprite (recolored and altered to be see through) and combine them together to make a fishbowl.

Instead of having a fishBOWL sprite, there should be a fish TANK sprite to encourage proper fish care. Making a simple tank sprite will help people know that that’s the proper enclosure for a fish, not a bowl.

Or, if you do need to keep the fishbowl sprite, also add a fish tank sprite to balance things out.

Yeah, I do agree with this.
Also, related to the issue of fishbowls not being properly filtered, they are easily susceptible to algae growing and poisoning the fishbowl. Okay, I might have gone too far with that.

Anyways, yeah, I do agree with this because fish tanks look better than fish bowls. (And also, it's more “fish-friendly”, I guess.)

This reminds me of Mojang getting rid of fireflies because apparently they are toxic to frogs…
(thanks a lot Minecraft community, now we won't get those 2 pixels!)

Anyway, I guess I agree, I knew they were kind of bad already but I don't think little kids do.

Most of Scratch's audience are children and stereotype a pet fish with a fish inside a glass bowl. People imagine a fish in a fishbowl when they think of a pet fish. I think the sprite should correlate with that reason. One also could say that the fishbowl sprite is more versatile to use on projects.

RED-001-alt wrote:

This reminds me of Mojang getting rid of fireflies because apparently they are toxic to frogs…
(thanks a lot Minecraft community, now we won't get those 2 pixels!)

Anyway, I guess I agree, I knew they were kind of bad already but I don't think little kids do.

I’d have liked it if the fireflies were left in, and if a frog ate them they’d get poisoned. They could have added regular flies in for frogs to eat and have the fireflies be toxic to them. But that’s offtopic

Yeah, exactly. Kids need to know proper fish care so they take better care of them in the future.

Prime689 wrote:

Most of Scratch's audience are children and stereotype a pet fish with a fish inside a glass bowl. People imagine a fish in a fishbowl when they think of a pet fish. I think the sprite should correlate with that reason. One also could say that the fishbowl sprite is more versatile to use on projects.

The thing is that further cements the thought that fishbowls are suitable, which they aren’t. If people saw what a good fish tank looked like they’d know that’s the right kind of enclosure and learn that bowls are bad.
Or have a tank alongside a bowl. Some kind of tank option would be good.

Why not ban the football/soccer sprite because you can get injured while playing sports? Everything is dangerous or bad if you think of it that way. I also highly doubt that any children are getting advice off of Scratch sprites. If children actually are… then they should not have pets. Also, you can use the square tool to draw a fish tank.

Should the fish tank sprite look like this?

Like you said, someone can literally just take the fish and the bowl sprite and put them together. You'd have to remove both the fishbowl sprite and either the fish or the bowl sprite to ensure that no one will make a fishbowl, which rules out either all fish or anything that needs a bowl as well.

coder2045 wrote:

Like you said, someone can literally just take the fish and the bowl sprite and put them together. You'd have to remove both the fishbowl sprite and either the fish or the bowl sprite to ensure that no one will make a fishbowl, which rules out either all fish or anything that needs a bowl as well.

Do you think they are suggesting banning fish bowls from scratch?

musicROCKS013 wrote:

coder2045 wrote:

Like you said, someone can literally just take the fish and the bowl sprite and put them together. You'd have to remove both the fishbowl sprite and either the fish or the bowl sprite to ensure that no one will make a fishbowl, which rules out either all fish or anything that needs a bowl as well.

Do you think they are suggesting banning fish bowls from scratch?

From what's been said, yes, in fact.

TheTrillion wrote:

Why not ban the football/soccer sprite because you can get injured while playing sports? Everything is dangerous or bad if you think of it that way.

Using that logic, we should ban the Neigh Pony sprite. It was based off an April Fools' Day prank.

While we're at it, why don't we ban the Ghost sprite? It could scare kids.

I feel like this is flawed because there's a problem for every sprite.
This is suggesting removing/replacing the fishbowl sprite because it harms fish.

k0d3rrr wrote:

TheTrillion wrote:

Why not ban the football/soccer sprite because you can get injured while playing sports? Everything is dangerous or bad if you think of it that way.

Using that logic, we should ban the Neigh Pony sprite. It was based off an April Fools' Day prank.
While we're at it, why don't we ban the Ghost sprite? It could scare kids.
I feel like this is flawed because there's a problem for every sprite.
This is suggesting removing/replacing the fishbowl sprite because it harms fish.

No! Don't stop there, we need to take down every sprite on the website because it can be dangerous for Scratchers!!!

On a serious note, I think that both sides are exaggerating their argument. We definitely should be careful what's on the site and what's not. However, there's really no fine line between what is too dangerous and what should be removed or banned.



Replacing the sprite would make sense though, but the danger of the fishbowl is pretty unclear and most kids who use this don't mean harm.

this is a good suggestion, i totally agree with it !!! just because something is a standard doesn't mean it's good

of course kids don't mean harm when using fishbowl !! harm is not the same as negative influence (but it can lead to harm) , so just to replace the sprite, there would not be negative influence .!!

RL1123 wrote:

No! Don't stop there, we need to take down every sprite on the website because it can be dangerous for Scratchers!!!

On a serious note, I think that both sides are exaggerating their argument. We definitely should be careful what's on the site and what's not. However, there's really no fine line between what is too dangerous and what should be removed or banned.



Replacing the sprite would make sense though, but the danger of the fishbowl is pretty unclear and most kids who use this don't mean harm.

That's it!

Whilst I do think that fishbowls should be put out of fashion in the real world, this does seem a little overkill - It is a sprite that is harmless on its own and I doubt that kids will get any ideas of getting and torturing a fish because it lives in a fishbowl.

M1mikyu wrote:

I was looking at the animal sprites in the Scratch sprite library, and noticed a fishbowl sprite. I think this should be removed, as fishbowls are very dangerous and cruel to fish. Reasons include them being too small, no room for a heater and filter, the bowl shape distorts their vision, among other things.

While you might argue “it’s harmless!”, depictions of fishbowls in the media make kids more likely to assume fishbowls are an okay enclosure for a pet fish, when it isn’t. If someone sees a fishbowl in the sprite library, it’ll further cement the thought that fishbowls are okay.
One could say that they may use the fishbowl sprite in a project explaining why bowls are bad for fish, which is valid, but they could also take the fish sprite and the bowl sprite (recolored and altered to be see through) and combine them together to make a fishbowl.

Instead of having a fishBOWL sprite, there should be a fish TANK sprite to encourage proper fish care. Making a simple tank sprite will help people know that that’s the proper enclosure for a fish, not a bowl.

Or, if you do need to keep the fishbowl sprite, also add a fish tank sprite to balance things out.

I think keeping them as pets is bad as well as you restrict thier freedom and in that way everything can have positives and negatives so you should request to add that sprite as well but due to bowl taking less space it is better for me to use in scratch

k0d3rrr wrote:

Should the fish tank sprite look like this?

Good idea!

coder2045 wrote:

musicROCKS013 wrote:

coder2045 wrote:

Like you said, someone can literally just take the fish and the bowl sprite and put them together. You'd have to remove both the fishbowl sprite and either the fish or the bowl sprite to ensure that no one will make a fishbowl, which rules out either all fish or anything that needs a bowl as well.

Do you think they are suggesting banning fish bowls from scratch?

From what's been said, yes, in fact.

No, I’m not. I, just suggesting the SPRITE to be removed. If someone wants to make their own fishbowl they can really easily, it just shouldn’t be there at default.

k0d3rrr wrote:

TheTrillion wrote:

Why not ban the football/soccer sprite because you can get injured while playing sports? Everything is dangerous or bad if you think of it that way.

Using that logic, we should ban the Neigh Pony sprite. It was based off an April Fools' Day prank.

While we're at it, why don't we ban the Ghost sprite? It could scare kids.

I feel like this is flawed because there's a problem for every sprite.
This is suggesting removing/replacing the fishbowl sprite because it harms fish.

Yeah, exactly. Any sprite can mean something bad, eg cheese puffs = unhealthy, bear sprites = encouraging kids to interact with bears, cat flying = making kids think cats can fly and then throwing their cat to see if it’s possible (please don’t do that), duck = encouraging kids to point and laugh at people lol (why DOES the duck sprite look like that anyway?), trampoline = dangerous
Fishbowls are something that is inherently harmful to begin with. Less exposure to bowls makes people less likely to want to put fish in bowls.
Edit: why is the referee sprite an anthropomorphic whistle???? I’m not sure if that’s cursed or genius. I both love and hate it XD

M1mikyu wrote:

it just shouldn’t be there at default.

What do you mean by “default?” You have to go in and select the sprite from the sprite library to use it. You only use it if you want a project with a fishbowl, and if it wasn't in the library people would simply draw it themself. It isn't like the scratch cat, at the creation of every scratch project. Choosing the fishbowl sprite is a deliberate thing, and even if you removed it from the sprite library, this wouldn't change the stereotypical cartoon fishbowl we use in modern media.