Animal Crossing: New Horizons player discovers that they can control the Football fish from the outside of their tank

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Yet another detail found almost a year after release

Animal Crossing: New Horizons football fish
(Image credit: Nintendo)

An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player has noticed another feature in the game, this time a unique feature found only in on-display Football fish. 

Reddit user u/-starwing shared in the Animal Crossing subreddit that Football fish actually use their own light source (scientifically known as their illicium) to light their tanks when they are on display. This means that when players interact with the tank to turn the light on and off, the light emanates from the fish instead of the tank, as it does with other species. 

Don't know if it has been mentioned before but when you interact with a football fish in an aquarium you turn on the fish's light instead of the aquarium from r/AnimalCrossing

This small but interesting find started a number of other Animal Crossing: New Horizons players to share things they’ve noticed from fish who are on display in the comments. 

One user stated that “the mantis shrimp attacks and cracks the glass.” which is a pretty accurate representation of the real-life sea creature as they pack a strong punch. Another user added that turning the light on for any Olive Flounders causes them to float to the top of the tank, before returning to the bottom to camouflage again - a technique that real olive flounders use in the wild. Finally, one other user said that Sea Butterflies do “a 'rawr!' motion” when you turn the brightness up in their tanks too.

Fans of this island getaway game have shared several other easy-to-miss details including that frog villagers are the only ones to not use an umbrella in the rain, as well as players can share a workbench with their villagers, and that dung beetles can make perfect snowboys.

For more easy-to-miss details, take a look at our Animal Crossing: New Horizons secret features list

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.