I love fish. I love to see them swim. Their underwater lives are fascinating to me. I just did a bit of reading and found that — according to fossil records — our friend the fish have been on Earth for more than 500 million years. That’s a long dang time.
And then there is this. The total number of living fish species is about 32,000. That number is greater than all other vertebrate species (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) combined. Here’s something else. The majority of the world’s fish species live in the Pacific Ocean, which is the largest ocean and has the highest number of coral reefs. About 70% of the species live there. And. The Atlantic is the saltiest ocean. And second largest.
Since we’re covering fishdom, the largest fish is the whale shark which can grow to 40 feet long. The smallest fish is the tiny goby. It is only half of an inch long as an adult. But here is the shocker of shockers. Different species of fish live for different lengths of time. Believe it or not, if it has a good life free from hooks, the orange roughy can live to be 100 years old.
I have to be honest here. I love fish in more ways than one. I like to eat them. I always feel like the “pushmi-pullyu” in Dr. Doolittle when it comes to eating meat. But there it is again. I love fish. And then, I love fish.
The one type I’m not so fond of is smoked fish. I’m just not crazy for the taste. Perhaps the most well-known type of smoked fish is the good old red herring.
It got its name initially because the smoking process turns the herring red.
But the name also holds a different meaning.
A red herring can be a clue or piece of information that is, or is intended to be, misleading or distracting.
You know. A ruse. A deception. A subterfuge.
Most of us know them because we’ve seen them in movies, or read about them in books. And, the thing about a good red herring is that we only realize the truth, well after the fact. These misleading clues are designed to trick us. They suck us into drawing incorrect conclusions.
But where does this phrase come from, and why is it named after a fish?
To know the story, we must start at the beginning. The herring. In nature, just swimming around, they are a silvery hue. They turn reddish-brown when they’re smoked.
Smoking meats and fish was the way to go, back in the days before refrigerators were invented. You could smoke meat and fish to preserve them for months at a time. But those red herring can be pretty darn stinky after they are smoked. Extremely stinky.
So. Not only did people hold their noses and eat the red herring back in the day, they also used those smelly fish to train horses. The kind of horses they used during fox hunts. The idea was that the horses would get used to following the scent trail of the smelly herring. So, when the hunt day came around, the horses would be less likely to get spooked while following the hounds during the noise and bustle of a fox hunt. The tactic employed a way of tricking the horses into thinking one way, while something entirely different was happening around them. The red herring.
I’m not sure when the herring training started. After all, fox hunting has been happening since the mid-1500s. But the first mention of a “red herring” in literature didn’t show up until the early 1800s, in a work of fiction by William Cobbett.
So there it is. Another species in our world of fish — the lying, deceptive, deceitful red herring.
Which brings up the question about being honest. Should we be honest, all the time? Do these pants make my butt look big? Do you think I’ve been eating too much red herring?
Oh, the great examinations of life. The questions surround us. One red herring after the next.
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“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”
― Adrienne Rich
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“Oh, what a tangled web we weave…when first we practice to deceive.”
― Walter Scott, Marmion
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“The truth is messy. It’s raw and uncomfortable. You can’t blame people for preferring lies.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove
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That good old red herring. Stinky, too.
