Distorted images of these ornamental fish thrashing at the surface of the water at their regular feeding frenzy. The Koi Carp’s grasping, apparently desperate, primordial feeding frenzy strikes me as an aquatic metaphor for city living.
Carp have been farmed for food for thousands of years; selective breeding has produced the ornamental varieties only relatively recently (the past few hundred years). Viewed in close-up, the appearance of Carp appears “pre-historic” at least to a non-biologist although there is a basis for this observation in that the Carp species, a member of the family collectively called cyprinids, are opportunistic predators, finding a niche in many locations and so have not needed to evolve to maintain their position in the ecosystem.