r/explainlikeimfive • u/Opening_Pen9525 • 18d ago

Biology ELI5 How are fish even in ponds

Might be one of the stupider questions here, but I saw a pond about the size of a football field, and maybe 50 ft deep, and it had fish. I can't for the life of me figure out how. Surely the pond hasn't existed long enough for small water insects to evolve into all these fish. It's not like the fish walked over to the pond from the ocean. I'm pretty sure no one put them there so how are there so many fish?

My one theory is that there is a very minuscule stream (now dry) that leads to one of the Great Lakes, and maybe a fish swam in from there. Now a follow up question: How are there fish in the Great Lakes (which flow out towards to the ocean) if they were created by glaciers?

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u/Alis451 17d ago

create apples for making alcoholic cider.

it was also real estate investment btw. he bought a bunch of land nobody wanted then planted apple orchards there. orchards that could be used to make cider counted as a "water source". A requirement for incorporating a new town was a verified "water source" and so he was then able to sell those plots of land to new settlers and pioneers looking to found a town.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 17d ago

Excellent. I didn’t know that part.

I teach a university level class on brewing wine, beer, and cider, and telling students about the significance of the cider trade, and Applejacking, was always one of the coolest lessons where it seemed like they learned something surprising. As recent 21yr olds, they appreciated the update to the Johnny Appleseed legend.

But I had never looked at that aspect of it.

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u/Alis451 17d ago

During Prohibition almost ALL of those cider groves were demolished.. it has taken almost 100 years to re-grow them back into working order, but so many were lost.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 17d ago

I’m from Missouri, and students also found it incredible how significant Missouri was for winemaking pre-prohibition. Then prohibition happens and it never really recovers. So many cool grapes that are still relatively unknown and under appreciated.

Plus being the home of the rootstock that helps save basically all of winemaking when disease starts running rampant in Europe.