AI
Wednesday, May 29, 2024 3:34:12 AM
Their lives could be more interesting to them than we think. It would be even more
interesting to learn whether or not, in any way, they understand their sex change.
"Good to know that some fish have sex changes to keep their lives interesting..."
Underwater and underrated: the truth behind fish intelligence
Scientists are finding plenty of clues that fish are more intelligent than anyone imagined.
By Peter Meredith • 8 January 2020
[...]
Fish diversity is mind-boggling. There are thought to be at least 65,000 vertebrate species alive today and of these more than half – 33,000 – are fish. They inhabit every conceivable aquatic niche, with total numbers of individuals in the trillions.
But despite their pedigree and evolutionary success, fish have an image problem. Humans tend to equate ancient with primitive, clinging to an obsolete view of evolution as a steady progression from inferior to advanced, with highly intelligent humans at the pinnacle. But that’s turning out to be a highly simplistic reading of the facts.
The similarities between fish and humans
[...]
“The hormones are the same; the neurons are the same; brain structure is very similar. People tend to focus on how different we are, but the scientific reality is that we’re actually very, very similar. The idea of higher and lower, primitive and advanced, doesn’t exist in evolutionary terms – we’re just another animal among the diversity. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that humans are the best and that you can only be intelligent if you’re similar to a human.”
Fish may seem dumb to us because their expressionless faces make them look dumb and uncommunicative. But that’s partly because we don’t understand the signals they give out. It takes much watching to become familiar with those signals, as scuba divers and owners of pet fish can testify.
We also seem to be unduly influenced by a perception that small brains must be primitive. On a scientific level, it’s a misconception that because the fish brain lacks a cortex – which in humans is responsible for perceiving, producing and understanding language – it must necessarily be incapable of performing many of the tasks of a human cortex. But Culum argues that the human cortex has taken on a huge number of roles that were once the domain of other brain regions. After all, a small brain and lack of a cortex hasn’t prevented many birds from becoming super-smart. Why should fish be any different?
Then there’s brain lateralisation,...
[...]
An aspect of intelligence that has long interested Culum has been the way fish learn and remember. One experiment he did on rainbowfish, a popular aquarium species endemic to Australia and Papua New Guinea, involved a net that moved from one end of a fish tank to the other. The net had a single hole in it; to avoid getting trapped, the fish needed to find the hole quickly.
It took them only five goes to master the test. Furthermore, larger groups did better than smaller ones, suggesting they learn from each other via a process known as social learning. And, even though rainbowfish live for only two years, the test fish still remembered the skill 11 months later.
Social learning and memory are essential for any creature living in a large, complex-social group. Fish can spend most of their lives in shoals or schools. They must learn and memorise their shoal’s structure, remember their status within it and be able to recognise kin and familiars.
Having social learning allows the potential for transferring information between individuals and also between generations, leading to the development of ‘cultural traits’ or ‘traditions’ that can persist over time, Culum says. Regular migration routes are examples. Northern Hemisphere cod have been moving to new spawning grounds in recent years, perhaps because commercial fishing has removed older individuals that remember traditional routes, depleting the species’ cultural knowledge.
Most fish activity involves moving through the environment. Long return journeys demand finely tuned spatial learning and memory that can generate mental maps featuring recognisable features in the environment. Without them fish wouldn’t be able to find their way around.
Fish also display some of the most remarkable examples of cooperation between species in the animal kingdom. One of the best examples involves cleaner wrasse. These fish, typically less than 20cm long, make a meal of parasites and bits of dead skin on the bodies of larger, often predatory, ‘client’ fishes. Cleaners operate at fixed ‘cleaning stations’ on coral outcrops. Clients that gather there are of varying species. A cleaner wrasse can remember and recognise more than 100 individual clients and prioritise them according to residential status, dealing with outsiders first because it knows that locals will stick around but outsiders may seek another station if service isn’t fast enough.
Occasionally a cleaner is tempted to ignore the usual menu items and instead bites off a mouthful of tasty and nutritional mucus from a client. The client may flinch at this and swim off ‘in a huff’ while the cleaner, anxious not to lose a customer, swims after it and placates it with a soothing back rub delivered with its pelvic and pectoral fins, in what Culum describes as a striking example of social intelligence.
Another example of cooperation between species involves groupers and giant moray eels, which team up for hunting expeditions. A grouper seeking a hunting partner will entice a moray out of its cavity with specific ‘come hunt with me’ signals. Then the pair sets off, the eel flushing prey from crevices, while the grouper uses its speed to snap up the meals that they share.
A moray and a grouper prepare to hunt together. A grouper can invite a moray to hunt by using either a distinctive ‘hunt with me’ body shimmy or a headstand signal that points towards hidden prey. . Image: Reinhard Dirscherl/Getty
All this involves cognitive complexity on several levels: the deliberate communication between the two to set up the hunt; the different roles they play; and the subsequent sharing of food.
With many scientific studies now pointing to fish being highly intelligent, we face awkward ethical and moral questions about our treatment of them. Remember, they are our among our most numerous food sources and commonly used as pets and laboratory test subjects. Do they suffer and feel pain in these interactions with us? If so, shouldn’t we try to minimise their suffering by granting them the same animal welfare rights we grant other creatures such as livestock, dogs and cats?
In a 2015 paper in the journal Animal Cognition, Culum argued that there is no doubt fish have the ability to perceive pain.
“It would be impossible for fish to survive as cognitively and behaviourally complex animals without a capacity to feel pain,” he wrote. “Feeling pain and responding appropriately…are clearly critical to survival.”
The incredible collective behaviour of fish
[...]
“The collective behaviour of fish is mathematically very similar to the collective behaviour of certainly birds, certainly krill, certainly sheep, and perhaps humans too,” he says.
Collective decision-making within a group – for instance, about the direction a shoal should turn – is something else Ashley has studied. He’s found that the bigger the group, the faster and better its decision-making.
There’s safety in numbers for this shoal of bigeye trevally. Scientists have found that the bigger a shoal,
the more it confuses predators and therefore the safer it is for individual fish. As well, collective
decision-making is faster. Image: Reinhard Dirscherl / Alamy Stock Photo
“I’ve attended endless tedious academic meetings, and inevitably the larger the meeting, the longer it takes to get resolution. If group-living animals were paralysed by increasing group size, group-living simply wouldn’t work,” he says.
Ashley has found the same phenomenon across a range of fish. Collecting, integrating and acting on information doesn’t require each individual to have its own say or to object. The process is achieved in a smooth, non-vocal way and the result is dramatic to watch.
“Where that talks to fish intelligence is in the ability of each individual in the group to act as a part of the whole, to integrate into the group, perform a function and rely on others to perform other functions, but still do it effectively,” Ashley explains.
He has no doubt fish are intelligent and capable of highly sophisticated behaviour, but he keeps an open mind on whether they feel pain or suffer in the sense we understand. Even so, he’s in favour of an animal welfare approach, especially with commercial fishing, laboratory animals and pets. He adds that there can be few things worse for a shoaling fish than being alone in a small, featureless container: “If you put a single herring in a tub, it dies of loneliness, of the sheer stress of the situation.”
Do fish feel pain?
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2020/01/underwater-and-underrated-the-truth-behind-fish-intelligence/
interesting to learn whether or not, in any way, they understand their sex change.
"Good to know that some fish have sex changes to keep their lives interesting..."
Underwater and underrated: the truth behind fish intelligence
Scientists are finding plenty of clues that fish are more intelligent than anyone imagined.
By Peter Meredith • 8 January 2020
[...]
Fish diversity is mind-boggling. There are thought to be at least 65,000 vertebrate species alive today and of these more than half – 33,000 – are fish. They inhabit every conceivable aquatic niche, with total numbers of individuals in the trillions.
But despite their pedigree and evolutionary success, fish have an image problem. Humans tend to equate ancient with primitive, clinging to an obsolete view of evolution as a steady progression from inferior to advanced, with highly intelligent humans at the pinnacle. But that’s turning out to be a highly simplistic reading of the facts.
The similarities between fish and humans
[...]
“The hormones are the same; the neurons are the same; brain structure is very similar. People tend to focus on how different we are, but the scientific reality is that we’re actually very, very similar. The idea of higher and lower, primitive and advanced, doesn’t exist in evolutionary terms – we’re just another animal among the diversity. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that humans are the best and that you can only be intelligent if you’re similar to a human.”
Fish may seem dumb to us because their expressionless faces make them look dumb and uncommunicative. But that’s partly because we don’t understand the signals they give out. It takes much watching to become familiar with those signals, as scuba divers and owners of pet fish can testify.
We also seem to be unduly influenced by a perception that small brains must be primitive. On a scientific level, it’s a misconception that because the fish brain lacks a cortex – which in humans is responsible for perceiving, producing and understanding language – it must necessarily be incapable of performing many of the tasks of a human cortex. But Culum argues that the human cortex has taken on a huge number of roles that were once the domain of other brain regions. After all, a small brain and lack of a cortex hasn’t prevented many birds from becoming super-smart. Why should fish be any different?
Then there’s brain lateralisation,...
[...]
An aspect of intelligence that has long interested Culum has been the way fish learn and remember. One experiment he did on rainbowfish, a popular aquarium species endemic to Australia and Papua New Guinea, involved a net that moved from one end of a fish tank to the other. The net had a single hole in it; to avoid getting trapped, the fish needed to find the hole quickly.
It took them only five goes to master the test. Furthermore, larger groups did better than smaller ones, suggesting they learn from each other via a process known as social learning. And, even though rainbowfish live for only two years, the test fish still remembered the skill 11 months later.
Social learning and memory are essential for any creature living in a large, complex-social group. Fish can spend most of their lives in shoals or schools. They must learn and memorise their shoal’s structure, remember their status within it and be able to recognise kin and familiars.
Having social learning allows the potential for transferring information between individuals and also between generations, leading to the development of ‘cultural traits’ or ‘traditions’ that can persist over time, Culum says. Regular migration routes are examples. Northern Hemisphere cod have been moving to new spawning grounds in recent years, perhaps because commercial fishing has removed older individuals that remember traditional routes, depleting the species’ cultural knowledge.
Most fish activity involves moving through the environment. Long return journeys demand finely tuned spatial learning and memory that can generate mental maps featuring recognisable features in the environment. Without them fish wouldn’t be able to find their way around.
Fish also display some of the most remarkable examples of cooperation between species in the animal kingdom. One of the best examples involves cleaner wrasse. These fish, typically less than 20cm long, make a meal of parasites and bits of dead skin on the bodies of larger, often predatory, ‘client’ fishes. Cleaners operate at fixed ‘cleaning stations’ on coral outcrops. Clients that gather there are of varying species. A cleaner wrasse can remember and recognise more than 100 individual clients and prioritise them according to residential status, dealing with outsiders first because it knows that locals will stick around but outsiders may seek another station if service isn’t fast enough.
Occasionally a cleaner is tempted to ignore the usual menu items and instead bites off a mouthful of tasty and nutritional mucus from a client. The client may flinch at this and swim off ‘in a huff’ while the cleaner, anxious not to lose a customer, swims after it and placates it with a soothing back rub delivered with its pelvic and pectoral fins, in what Culum describes as a striking example of social intelligence.
Another example of cooperation between species involves groupers and giant moray eels, which team up for hunting expeditions. A grouper seeking a hunting partner will entice a moray out of its cavity with specific ‘come hunt with me’ signals. Then the pair sets off, the eel flushing prey from crevices, while the grouper uses its speed to snap up the meals that they share.
A moray and a grouper prepare to hunt together. A grouper can invite a moray to hunt by using either a distinctive ‘hunt with me’ body shimmy or a headstand signal that points towards hidden prey. . Image: Reinhard Dirscherl/Getty
All this involves cognitive complexity on several levels: the deliberate communication between the two to set up the hunt; the different roles they play; and the subsequent sharing of food.
With many scientific studies now pointing to fish being highly intelligent, we face awkward ethical and moral questions about our treatment of them. Remember, they are our among our most numerous food sources and commonly used as pets and laboratory test subjects. Do they suffer and feel pain in these interactions with us? If so, shouldn’t we try to minimise their suffering by granting them the same animal welfare rights we grant other creatures such as livestock, dogs and cats?
In a 2015 paper in the journal Animal Cognition, Culum argued that there is no doubt fish have the ability to perceive pain.
“It would be impossible for fish to survive as cognitively and behaviourally complex animals without a capacity to feel pain,” he wrote. “Feeling pain and responding appropriately…are clearly critical to survival.”
The incredible collective behaviour of fish
[...]
“The collective behaviour of fish is mathematically very similar to the collective behaviour of certainly birds, certainly krill, certainly sheep, and perhaps humans too,” he says.
Collective decision-making within a group – for instance, about the direction a shoal should turn – is something else Ashley has studied. He’s found that the bigger the group, the faster and better its decision-making.
There’s safety in numbers for this shoal of bigeye trevally. Scientists have found that the bigger a shoal,
the more it confuses predators and therefore the safer it is for individual fish. As well, collective
decision-making is faster. Image: Reinhard Dirscherl / Alamy Stock Photo
“I’ve attended endless tedious academic meetings, and inevitably the larger the meeting, the longer it takes to get resolution. If group-living animals were paralysed by increasing group size, group-living simply wouldn’t work,” he says.
Ashley has found the same phenomenon across a range of fish. Collecting, integrating and acting on information doesn’t require each individual to have its own say or to object. The process is achieved in a smooth, non-vocal way and the result is dramatic to watch.
“Where that talks to fish intelligence is in the ability of each individual in the group to act as a part of the whole, to integrate into the group, perform a function and rely on others to perform other functions, but still do it effectively,” Ashley explains.
He has no doubt fish are intelligent and capable of highly sophisticated behaviour, but he keeps an open mind on whether they feel pain or suffer in the sense we understand. Even so, he’s in favour of an animal welfare approach, especially with commercial fishing, laboratory animals and pets. He adds that there can be few things worse for a shoaling fish than being alone in a small, featureless container: “If you put a single herring in a tub, it dies of loneliness, of the sheer stress of the situation.”
Do fish feel pain?
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2020/01/underwater-and-underrated-the-truth-behind-fish-intelligence/
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
