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Anonymous
Males typically have larger finnage than females, but not always. There are shorttail breeds of Bettas in which finnage is not a good determining factor of gender. If you're buying from a pet store, you run a remote risk of picking up a shorttail male that is misidentified as a female. You run a similar remote risk when buying from a breeder, but it's less likely that a reputable breeder will mis-sex a fish.
That said, there are other ways to tell a Betta's gender than finnage. One is behavior. Males tend to be more aggressive and will more readily flare at their reflection in a mirror. Females flare as well, but under most circumstances won't do so as readily as males. Also, females will engage their reflective double head on whereas males will engage at an angle or sideways so as to appear larger to his perceived opponent. All male Bettas blow bubble nests (the big piles of what look like soap bubbles on the surface of their tanks); very few females do. This is because in nature, the males take care of the fry until they are free-swimming.
A fairly fail-safe, but often difficult way (especially on light-colored Bettas) to determine gender is to look on the underside of the fish, just behind the pectoral fins. If there is a white dot, about the size of a grain of salt, then odds are pretty good that your Betta is female. All female Bettas have visible genitalia...that's what this dot is. HOWEVER, a small number of males (of any size or fin type) will have a similar dot in the same place. This is a very rare occurrence and is thought to be one of two things: either very large or prolapsed genitalia.
In other words, sexing Bettas is a somewhat inexact science, but there are a good number of ways to make a guess that will be accurate in 99% of cases. I'd wager that unless you keep a large number of Bettas or are a breeder, you'll never come across any "exceptions" to the rules.
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