Are fish more intelligent than we realize?
vox.com
vox.com
His tank is about ten feet away from my desk and behind me. I remember turning my head to look at the tank, and being surprised that he somehow realized that I was looking toward him. He eagerly emerged from behind the heater he normally hides behind to swim up to the front of the tank, in the same fashion that he does if I walk past the tank.
I often feel guilty, wondering if he would long for a larger area in which to swim, and if I haven't merely imprisoned him in his five gallon tank. (In a way, I rescued him from his tiny cup at the pet store, but my demand for him is why he is even at a pet store.)
I deny my house cat the ability to roam outside, but she still seems rather content with eating and sleeping and being petted in an environment devoid of danger. But my betta fish seems to swim along the front of his tank as if he wants to enter the world in which I live, and I couldn't grant him that even if I wanted to.
I then take this thought process to a level of absurdity and wonder if our god(s) would peer at us and not fully understand when we suffer or what makes us suffer, for they are men and we are fish.
This is why you can also leave a Betta in dirty water for a long time. I'm staying with some friends right now who, just this past week, rescued a Betta from filthy water in a long empty dorm room. He was still alive, though, because Bettas have a special organ for breathing actual air!
Crazy, eh? I say all that to say this: in the wild, your Betta would be sitting completely still in a puddle doing nothing until a bug hops into the water.
Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Mine sure does...
My human brain still senses longing when he swims up to the front of the tank, but I guess I'll never truly understand how he feels.
That said, there's a blog post in one of the comments here where the author chronicles a similar sentiment, where his Betta fish at least apparently chose suicide (!). It made me seriously considering researching how to release my fish into the wild.
>Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Probably, but I don't believe she's severely depressed on account of her restrictions, even if she can't comprehend that I do it with the intentions of keeping her healthy in the long term. But again, the problem is not knowing. She doesn't wait by the door to make an escape, so I have to guess she's fairly content.
Fish respond very strongly to any kind of motion or activity. Remember, many of them hunt insects.
IMO odds are you're personifying normal fish behavior.
replace god(s) with aliens and absurdity becomes reality.
Fish are harder to keep than people realize. They are sensitive to a lot more things than other animals. Yet most people who get them seem to not know how to take care of them. They kill them either through either negligence or ignorance. It's almost acceptable in society to accidentally kill captive fish. My roommate in college kept a fish tank that she put a couple fish she got at the fair and I think she bought a bottom feeder to go with them. Well, she wasn't the best at keeping up the cleaning and the tank got quite dirty sometimes. The tank was real nasty and one day she took the fish out and cleaned the tank completely and did a full water change. She put the fish back in and all but one died right away. Apparently you aren't supposed to do that? Shock? Change in chlorine? I don't know.
For some reason looking into the tank and seeing those dead fish really affected me. They just died due to a mistake. If you accidentally killed any other pet (cat, dog) it would be horrific but for some reason because it was fish it seemed like it was just nothing. "Whoopie"
Also - this was a really good article.
(It was likely the quick temperature change that killed them.)
I think it was also the fact that I noticed they were dead before she did. If she just said "oh crap the fish are dead" to me I wouldn't have the same reaction.
We have little or no direct concept of what the environment is like for the fish, and, without studying it, we don't inherently know what their environment ought to be. Superficially, fish live in water, so it's easy to assume that we can toss them into any body of water and it's fine. But of course that's not true. And the details vary amongst different fish.
EDIT: I think also, people tend to view fish as decorations. Or more to the point, aquariums with fish are decorations. You have to maintain them similar to how you have to water houseplants. The fact that they are animals and not plants might be seen as a minor detail.
That's most likely the reason. You should have a filter and a bio-filter. You never change them both at the same time. The bio-filter harbors bacteria which neutralizes the fish urine. Yes, it will not seem 'clean' but it doesn't matter. Anyway, you should change out the water a bit at a time. Imagine that the water is water in a glass. If you let it evaporate halfway, and add more water, then eventually that water will get cloudy as the concentration of minerals increases. Minerals don't evaporate, so that water gets more and more concentrated minerals. You have to remove about 10% of the water a week and replace it, to keep the water normal. You could also use distilled water, which I've had success in starting a new tank, but if you do clean out a tank, don't clean the bio filter and you need to let the new water sit for about 24 hours to let the chlorine dissipate.
>Change in chlorine?
Uh, there shouldn't be any chlorine in a fish tank. You and your roommate should probably look up fish care in google or something. The first link is to ASPCA and they do have good advice. I had an aquarium for several years, and if you don't know what you are doing, mollies or perhaps a plecostomus is a good choice. The pleco can survive pretty nasty water. However, they can grow pretty large and they would need a huge tank. They live about 10 years or more, so it's a big commitment. On the plus side, they will clean the sides of the tank.
That's how someone else explained it to me as well. When I say "Change in chlorine" I meant "she started again with tap water so there was addition of chlorine." and "I don't think she considered the chlorine." We had super chlorinated tap water in that city.
>You and your roommate should probably look up fish care
She was my roommate more than a decade ago and I don't know her anymore but yea, of course she should have known better because she was keeping fish. They were also just fish from a carnival/fair so she didn't exactly PLAN on keeping fish. She also went to the store and added a bottom feeder to the goldfish. Which was part of the point. Many (most?) people don't know what the hell they are doing when they start/maintain a fish tank. This is common.
I had absolutely, and I mean absolutely, nothing to do with the fish tank. I wouldn't touch it, it was hers. She was keeping the fish not me. She had the fish before we met. I also had no idea whatsoever she was changing the fish tank water or that you weren't supposed to do that. I wasn't her babysitter. I wasn't (an am not) responsible for her mistakes.
I am not going to look up fish care on google because there is no way I'd ever keep a fish tank. I was simply speaking of my experience with a former roommate's mistakes, I don't need a lecture on fish care.
I think she just neglected the tank for so long she felt starting over with fresh water would be easier not knowing the consequences. The fish lived for years before this incident.
Its as bad as parenting, although the stakes aren't as high and its often more carefully planned.
Tropical fish are cool, I've kept some on and off since the 80s.
I will say from my wild youth that they are a good hangover pet. When you're too "blah" in the morning to do anything, you can at least watch the fish.
I have had the same pleco for about 9 years although it strangely seems to have stopped growing around 5 inches or so. And I had an oscar for many years and only I fed it and through extensive experimentation involving cardboard boxes and other test subjects I came to the conclusion that it identified me coming to feed it by gait analysis not visually, which I thought was interesting. Or maybe my experiment was faulty, I donno.
Gotta be careful with fish, even just trace contamination from some herbicides and detergents can kill them. That might have gotten those fish.
It's just easier to get those things out of whack. We can't change the acid content of the air animals are always in contact with, nor can we significantly change the chemical composition of that air.
An ill-maintained fish tank will do those things - doesn't meant that a fish is more sensitive than a dog, only that the environment of the fish is much more sensitive than the environment of a dog.
Fish can tell the difference between your average scuba diver or snorkeler not just by seeing the speargun, but by recognizing body posture and watching your eyes for intent. Their lateral line is a sophisticated sensor used to feel vibrations in the water, so they can literally feel the tension in your muscles. They also learn socially, so if one fish on the reef is nearby and has had a bad experience with a diver, they will sound the alarm for everyone else.
Fish really are inquisitive, and can even have individual personalities. It's well worth getting to know them in their own environment.
There used to be a couple of koi carps in a pond at my mother's place, one red, one white.
One day, the water pump stopped working, and, as the oxygen level in the water was dropping the fishes started to suffocate.
When we realized the problem, the white one was already almost belly up. Barely breathing, and unable to move. The red one could still swim, but he was tilting.
We brought out the water hose to agitate the water and oxygenate it. It created a current that sent the white fish drifting down and away in while the red one could stay afloat in the safe zone. We tried to alternate the spraying between both, but the white one kept drifting away from the fresh water.
To our surprise the red koi started to bring back the white one from the bottom to the surface. He the kept lifting the other in a corner. He probably saved his pal's life.
Both recovered, even though the white one kept a 15 degrees tilt for the rest of his life.
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-...
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals I've trapped
Have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
But it's okay to eat fish
'Cause they don't have any feelings
At some level, the truth or falsity of the proposition, "the betta feels trapped", is irrelevant, because we find what we need in the piece.
The most relevant part is the section titled "My betta", and here's a teaser:
"I had taken to lying on my bed and watching my betta for an hour or longer. The betta was the sole occupant of the tank in my bedroom. I had filled the tank with plants and copious natural light, so the effect was calming and serene. At times I almost envied the betta for the nice home I'd made for him.
"One day, after the betta had been in his new home for several weeks, I found him exploring. It was a most unusual exploration, and one that I will never forget.
...
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much the wheel, New York, wars and so on whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.
Douglas Adams
Until the day I realized that there are some vegetarian foods that can supply these nutrients too. For example, linseeds and walnuts are rich in omega-3 as well.
Just putting it out there, in case anyone is on the fence, like I was.
Many of the health problems that this kind of diet createscan take decades to take do noticeable health damage and by then it's too late.
As Michael Pollan says: Eat food, not what food eats, and eat a lot of it, and you might survive till Christmas.
Then there is protein intake, if you don't want to eat meat then you have to usually combine two sources of protein each day to get all the nescessary amino acids, because (almost?) no plant source has all of them. And no it does not matter that Gorillas only eat plants and they are really strong too, that has little to no relevance as A) their digestive system is not identical to that of humans and B) they have convenient access to just the food they need.
I'm not nescessarily a big fan of eating meat or animal products, because I am aware of the production conditions and environmental impact. But I would rather not have to follow several advice books in order to have a healthy diet.
Personally, I don't shy away from reading and getting more info if it helps me avoid meat. I am not a strict vegan; eggs and milk products are par for my course. So, I think I can cope up with a little less meat on my plate.
Aside, in the part of the world where I live, it is more common to be a vegetarian than a meat-eater. AFAICT, the vegetarians are not worse-off health-wise. I suspect that the ability to cope up with various nutrition deficiencies might vary among populations.
Just with respect to the B group vitamins, there's quite a few studies of vegan populations that show a consistent deficit in B12. Depending on the study, vegan populations consistently show (at 70-90% of the studied population) B12 deficits, even while taking supplements. The general conclusion among nutritionists is that it's very very hard for vegans to get enough B12 in their diets no matter what they try. Strangely, these studies never seem to show up in Vegan advocacy circles or support groups, though there is a general awareness that B12 availability is a problem with the diet. More problematic, B12 deficiency (and the related issues below) do not present as immediate health issues, but develop over years and decades - presenting as permanent damage to neurological tissues. People who switch to Vegan diets often don't present with this deficiency for several years as the liver maintains a 3-5 year store of the vitamin.
B12 deficiency can be fatal. B12 deficiency is trivially treated by eating meat - surprisingly little meat too. Similar studies of Vegetarian populations who occasionally eat some animal source, don't show nearly as frequent B12 deficiencies as in Vegan populations.
Identifying B12 deficiency can be difficult as normal assays don't reliably show deficiencies, and initial symptoms looks like anemia, which is also highly prevalent among vegan dieters and may co-present.
Along with B12 deficiency, elevated methylmalonic acid is typical in some majority of the studied vegan populations. Which is used as a secondary signal to confirm B12 deficiency. MMA reacts with B12 to produce coenzyme A (CoA) which is necessary for normal cell function. People with elevated MMA are often diagnosed with methylmalonic acidemia - a group of disorders which are normally only seen in infants with specific genetic conditions relevant to B12 absorption, but present with progressive encephalopathy and hyperammonemia, both can cause death over the long-term.
A majority of vegans can also usually be diagnosed with Hyperhomocysteinemia (which is only ever seen in three population groups, the severely malnourished, the extreme elderly and vegans and is trivially treated with an omnivorous diet). Studies which show cardiovascular issues in Vegans (surprisingly more common than you'd think) attribute them to Hyperhomocysteinemia as Homocysteine prevents proper formation and maintenance of key cardiovascular components like collagen and elastin (also noticeable in Vegan populations as "thin skin" or "premature wrinkling"). It's also linked to Alzheimer's disease and Schizophrenia. The later disease occurs in vegan populations with a startlingly higher frequency than in vegetarian and omnivorous dieter populations.
This is just some of the issues from B12 deficiency, which occurs somewhere between 70-90% of any randomly selected vegan population. So we know that vegans, as a general population, are not able to supply themselves with sufficient B12.
You can probably google for the relevant studies on your own. There's plenty of them around, but I'd urge you to find them in medical journals, not interpreted through vegan advocacy sites which seem to have a habit of ignoring the important health issues and suppressing negative health outcomes from the diet.
I'd urge you to check out amino acids, and fatty acid issues as well, as they are just as common in vegan populations and can be just as health concerning.
Interestingly, almost every single health issue that stems from a vegan diet is trivially treated by just eating a few grams of animal protein sources a week. Eating plant foods or supplements rich in these normally vegan deficient nutrients doesn't mean they're bioavailable, what matters is absorption of the relevant nutrient, which is something that vegan diets are notoriously poor in providing.
Here's something I wrote on this a while ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6888323
Animals (including us) eat other animals. That's part of life. It's nothing to feel bad about.
We don't need to eat other animals to survive.
It is very possible (and very easy, in some places) to survive and thrive without animal products at all. Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?
Everything that lives suffers and dies eventually. Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human?
These aren't the only two options. We could also stop breeding animals into miserable existences in order to fatten them up and slaughter them for our consumption (which, in addition to causing suffering, causes great harm to the environment as well).
> It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place.
I don't disagree that this was the case. In the past, people had fewer choices (and sadly, many people today do not have the luxury of choosing which foods they eat -- if they can get enough food at all). I am lucky to have a ton of options available to me, and so I choose to not support suffering.
We could also sterilize the planet and end suffering entirely.
Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?
Define suffering.
If you raise them in conditions not worse than they'd face in the wild, and kill them in a way that they die quickly (which is far better than they'd face in the wild), what's the problem?
Come back to us when any form of fishing, especially commercial fishing, is like this.
There isn't that implicit assumption. It was simply speaking of the double standard of "humane" people have of land animals vs fish. And how that standard might not actually be justified - in other words a cultural myth.
It even said "For aquaculture, at least, we have some control, and I suspect the movement will begin there. I could envision having Atlantic salmon, say, from a farm, that has some sort of humane treatment approval — free-range, or whatever — for people who are willing to pay a little more for some animal that's been treated reasonably well."
Can't we simply explain this more simply as fish remembering which other fishes are stronger or weaker? No need to introduce the concept of hierarchy here.
Most people don't realize how incredibly stupid cows and chickens are. There's a reason they don't exist in the wild - they would never survive. Our neighbors raised turkeys and had a special pen with rounded corners because young turkeys will get stuck in normal corners and starve to death.
Chickens do just fine if there are no effective predators.
What are you trying to say?
The hidden intelligence of fish is not surprising. They are more "sophisticated" than molluscs, and yet we are learning fascinating and frightening things about the intelligence of gastropods.