Fish Is Intelligent

by Miroslava Jurcik

Title

Fish Is Intelligent

Artist

Miroslava Jurcik

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

Fish intelligence is "...the resultant of the process of acquiring, storing in memory, retrieving, combining, comparing, and using in new contexts information and conceptual skills" as it applies to fish. According to Culum Brown from Macquarie University, "Fish are more intelligent than they appear. In many areas, such as memory, their cognitive powers match or exceed those of ‘higher’ vertebrates including non-human primates."
In 2011we eaten up to about 132.3 million metric tons of fish. But the welfare of fish—which are vertebrates just like cows, pigs, and chickens, and possessing evolutionary lineages as long as those of homo sapiens—has been barely discussed. As a result “the potential amount of cruelty we're inflicting is mind-boggling,” says fish biologist Culum Brown, an assistant professor at Macquarie University in Australia. “People need to have a greater appreciation of how smart fish are,” he says. “Just because we're ignorant is no excuse to treat another animal poorly. All the evidence suggests that they're just as sophisticated as other vertebrates.”
Brown reviewed nearly 200 research papers on fish sensory perception, natural cognitive abilities (including “numerality,” or an ability to assess quantity), and abilities to perceive and experience pain, and found ample evidence that fish are intelligent on all counts.
For instance, some fish species use tools. Brown cites research showing that certain types of wrasse use rocks to crush sea urchins in order to eat their softer insides, while cichlids and catfish have been observed gluing their eggs to leaves and small rocks, which they carry around when their nests are disrupted.
Tool use was long considered unique to human beings, but has become well-acknowledged in species such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows.
Fish can also learn quickly and can keep memories long-term. Brown's own research found it took only five trial runs for rainbowfish to learn how to swim out of a net via a single hole, and that they remembered the escape route after not seeing the net for nearly a year. “This is remarkable for a fish that only lives for 2 years in the wild,” writes Brown. “Moreover, the more fish present in the group the faster they learn,” just one example he cites of fish displaying “social learning.”
Fish also show “Machiavellian intelligence,” the ability to manipulate the behavior of others via deception, or by reconciling with them. Cleaner fish of the Great Barrier Reef, which eat away the dead skin and parasites on other fish, utilize a “fantastic reconciliation process” when they bite their food carriers by mistake, says Brown. “It turns out, and I think this is very cool, they often give a back rub to their clients.”
To try and understand why, a fish biologist devised an experiment: Install a rotating brush at the surface of an aquarium, and see if fish come up and self-administer back rubs. When they did, the question changed to why they did it. “There doesn't seem to be any physical benefit,” said Brown, “but they looked at their hormones, and it turns out it's reducing stress levels, like some remedial massage. It's bizarre!”
All animals deserve to be treated with respect and if eaten, they deserve quick painless death, including fish !!
And I am not sure what this little fish is , sorry !

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July 3rd, 2018

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