Imagine What It Would Be Like To Be A Pet Fish

[sciencefiction]

No In my view, your just kickin a dead horse or not reading.

I actually talked facts....Its strange that you call it "kicking a dead horse" just because it doesn't suit your view. Your obviously haven't done your research and talk old tales not tied to reality that make one feel better about their fish misfortunes. It's nice to think that the fish I killed the other day had a better life than most of its wild counterparts...but is that true? The fact is most fishkeepers or anyone that has anything to do with fish, happens to kill fish more often than not, even with the best intentions.

 

[zozo]

Long time ago as akid i red a story about Goldfish and where they come from.. That their history goes back for thousands of years reared as consumption fish in ancient China. The first found records about breeding ornamental variaties of these fish go back about 2000 years. Certain colors where prohibited to be bred by the common people and were exclusively bred for royal gardenponds. There is a legendary tale telling about an Chinese emporer who gave all his pet goldfish it's own name and each fish responded accordingly and came to him when he sat next to pond and called it's name.
I searched for it, but yet i couldn't find any digital version of this tale on the net, still it might be around somewhere..

I was very young back then and this beautiful story kinda intrigued me so much i never realy have forgoten it. Now it comes to mind it migh have contributed to my view that there is more to these animals than just gasping, eating and breeding and that they are way less numb as they appear to us. Dunno if there is any truth to the story, but why not, gold fish are known to do tricks if conditioned propperly. So when there is smoke there is fire. I guess only an emporer has the time to spend to sit next to a pond all day and train a few fish. I never even tried, feels kinda silly sitting next to a pond and calling names, even tho i have a special bond with my goldfish and almost daily spend some time with them.

And when you think of it and research some biology texts, you come to know that fish have a much higher sensory perception than we do. They have eyes, ears, nose, some have highly sensitive wiskers at their mouth, all have a swimblader sensing vertical pressure changes and a lateral line sensing horizontal pressure differences. So we can't say it is a fantasy that they sense their invironment with a more sophisticated sensibility than we could ever dream of.

It doesn't fit the bill, thinking they don't do much with it..

 

[roadmaster]

I actually talked facts....Its strange that you call it "kicking a dead horse" just because it doesn't suit your view. Your obviously haven't done your research and talk old tales not tied to reality that make one feel better about their fish misfortunes. It's nice to think that the fish I killed the other day had a better life than most of its wild counterparts...but is that true? The fact is most fishkeepers or anyone that has anything to do with fish, happens to kill fish more often than not, even with the best intentions.

You say I speak of old tales, with no basis in reality.
With the exception of my opinion as to fishes intelligence(or lack thereof),I defy you or anyone else to point me to any untruth's I have submitted.
What I have submitted may not fit YOUR reality but that don't confront me, and that which I have submitted for other's to read is easily realized throughout the hobby and among studies.
No ,fish keeper's do NOT kill fishes more often than not as you have stated with any amount of forethought/research.
Those that maybe do ,are fish collector's I spoke of, or newbies with little to no experiences .
They buy fishes they like(no research) ,they perhaps die for a myriad of reason's ,and they buy more repeating same mistakes and hoping for different outcomes.
Fish keeper's that have been at it for a while don't lose near the number's of fishes that the uninformed do.
They begin to wonder not what medication's can I throw at the tank ,but rather how can I increase my success with a particular species.
Good stock to start with ,suitable water chemistry,nutritious diet's,good tank husbandry,etc all which I mentioned a couple three times now.

 

[Smells Fishy]

On a grander scale that's false. Take for example clown loaches. There are millions of them exported for the aquarium trade every year. How many of them to you think live longer than their cousin in the wild?...in reality very few of them survive the first year. If I were a fish, I'd take my chances in the wild if I had a choice....

I agree with you on the clown loach side but on a whole I dont. Simply because in the wild a fish will be lucky to not have some sort of parasite, think of all the wild caught discus that need to be dewormed before sale etc. Most fish unless they are some sort of big predator, will be afraid for there life most of the time. In the Amazon when the dry season comes its any small fishes worst nightmare with them being cut of from the larger body's of water they are trapped in small ponds just hoping not to be eaten that day. I imagine they can't even sleep well at night with all the night time predators. Are fish kept in tanks don't have any of these fears of they shouldn't if kept properly.

 

[Smells Fishy]

On a grander scale that's false. Take for example clown loaches. There are millions of them exported for the aquarium trade every year. How many of them to you think live longer than their cousin in the wild?...in reality very few of them survive the first year. If I were a fish, I'd take my chances in the wild if I had a choice....

I agree with you on the clown loach side but on a whole I dont. Simply because in the wild a fish will be lucky to not have some sort of parasite, think of all the wild caught discus that need to be dewormed before sale etc. Most fish unless they are some sort of big predator, will be afraid for there life most of the time. In the Amazon when the dry season comes its any small fishes worst nightmare with them being cut of from the larger body's of water they are trapped in small ponds just hoping not to be eaten that day. I imagine they can't even sleep well at night with all the night time predators. Are fish kept in tanks don't have any of these fears of they shouldn't if kept properly.

Long time ago as akid i red a story about Goldfish and where they come from.. That their history goes back for thousands of years reared as consumption fish in ancient China. The first found records about breeding ornamental variaties of these fish go back about 2000 years. Certain colors where prohibited to be bred by the common people and were exclusively bred for royal gardenponds. There is a legendary tale telling about an Chinese emporer who gave all his pet goldfish it's own name and each fish responded accordingly and came to him when he sat next to pond and called it's name.
I searched for it, but yet i couldn't find any digital version of this tale on the net, still it might be around somewhere..

I was very young back then and this beautiful story kinda intrigued me so much i never realy have forgoten it. Now it comes to mind it migh have contributed to my view that there is more to these animals than just gasping, eating and breeding and that they are way less numb as they appear to us. Dunno if there is any truth to the story, but why not, gold fish are known to do tricks if conditioned propperly. So when there is smoke there is fire. I guess only an emporer has the time to spend to sit next to a pond all day and train a few fish. I never even tried, feels kinda silly sitting next to a pond and calling names, even tho i have a special bond with my goldfish and almost daily spend some time with them.

And when you think of it and research some biology texts, you come to know that fish have a much higher sensory perception than we do. They have eyes, ears, nose, some have highly sensitive wiskers at their mouth, all have a swimblader sensing vertical pressure changes and a lateral line sensing horizontal pressure differences. So we can't say it is a fantasy that they sense their invironment with a more sophisticated sensibility than we could ever dream of.

It doesn't fit the bill, thinking they don't do much with it..

Yeah your right some fish really can be clicked on. Check out R2 fish school training kit on YouTube, the goldfish has developed some crazy skills. I would send a link but last time I tried it it didn't work and I didn't understand what you meant regarding cookies.

 

[zozo]

Yeah your right some fish really can be clicked on. Check out R2 fish school training kit on YouTube, the goldfish has developed some crazy skills. I would send a link but last time I tried it it didn't work and I didn't understand what you meant regarding cookies.

I know the vid seen it. Thanks. Never mind the cookies.. But if you see a vid on youtube, bellow it is a share link marked with an Arrow to the right. Click on it and the short share url shows.. Copy/paste this one and your good to go..

 

[mort]

I agree with you on the clown loach side but on a whole I dont. Simply because in the wild a fish will be lucky to not have some sort of parasite, think of all the wild caught discus that need to be dewormed before sale etc. Most fish unless they are some sort of big predator, will be afraid for there life most of the time. In the Amazon when the dry season comes its any small fishes worst nightmare with them being cut of from the larger body's of water they are trapped in small ponds just hoping not to be eaten that day. I imagine they can't even sleep well at night with all the night time predators. Are fish kept in tanks don't have any of these fears of they shouldn't if kept properly.

Parasites aren't such a major problem in the wild. Consider whitespot, it becomes more of an issue in the confines of a tank as the fish can't get away from it whereas wild parasites have a harder time finding a host and water quality is less of an issue (for the most part), therefore infections are likely to be lesser.
Another point is thinking of fish in the same way as us in terms of awareness and behaviour, they have evolved to be predator aware so won't show any difference in a aquarium as opposed to in a tank unless they truly do have the intelligence to determine there is no predatory threat, which I'm unsure of. More domesticated species like guppies, mollies or those of many generations of tank breeding may react differently but then I find it hard to believe the intelligence of these species is einsteinian to begin with.

I know in marine fish there have been studies of fish and cortisol levels, the stress hormone, and they found that parrotfish were less prolific breeders and died younger when understress on reefs but would the same fish when trapped in an unnatural aquaria settled own and live a longer "happier" life, again I'm not sure.

 

[mort]

I also see there is a little to and throwing going on in this post but I've also shared roadmasters experience of catching the same fish more than once on the same day. This was with some tagged fish so there was no doubt they were the same individual. Again these were hungry seafish but I can't remember which species as I was very young and had been told off for throwing all the fisherman's, that we were with, octopus that he'd caught back into the see when they weren't looking.

 

[zozo]

I guess in nature it is eat or be eaten.. If a fish looses his mojo and not watching it's back enough because destracted by malaise it'll be eaten before it's around the next corner.. It least the small ones we generaly keep..

 

[sciencefiction]

agree with you on the clown loach side but on a whole I dont. Simply because in the wild a fish will be lucky to not have some sort of parasite, think of all the wild caught discus that need to be dewormed before sale etc.

More on the parasites. Parasites do not kill the host and in nature fish may live infested with worms and parasites their whole life. Its the stress of capture, aquarium life, small quarters, unsuitable tank mates, water quality, etc...that triggers those parasites/worms to take over as the fish's immune system can't deal with it anymore. Hence they only become an issue in aquariums and not really an issue in the wild..Plus in the wild its not so easy for them to get infected with new diseases their immune system is not used to deal with. A happy fish is a healthy fish as their immune system does the "medicatiing". That's true for majority of fish diseases with some exceptions.

 

[sciencefiction]

You say I speak of old tales, with no basis in reality.
With the exception of my opinion as to fishes intelligence(or lack thereof),I defy you or anyone else to point me to any untruth's I have submitted.
What I have submitted may not fit YOUR reality but that don't confront me, and that which I have submitted for other's to read is easily realized throughout the hobby and among studies.
No ,fish keeper's do NOT kill fishes more often than not as you have stated with any amount of forethought/research.
Those that maybe do ,are fish collector's I spoke of, or newbies with little to no experiences .
They buy fishes they like(no research) ,they perhaps die for a myriad of reason's ,and they buy more repeating same mistakes and hoping for different outcomes.
Fish keeper's that have been at it for a while don't lose near the number's of fishes that the uninformed do.
They begin to wonder not what medication's can I throw at the tank ,but rather how can I increase my success with a particular species.
Good stock to start with ,suitable water chemistry,nutritious diet's,good tank husbandry,etc all which I mentioned a couple three times now.

I get what you're saying and I partially agree but every fishkeeper without exception has been a beginner. Multiply those millions by the number of fish they've killed...We're happy fish in nature breed like rabbits for the most part but this has not been the case for a long time, not for all species. The Europeans prior to reaching the America's had overfished the European continent and did their best to do the same savage fishing when they became "Americans".
This is not just about fish, but many other animals have been predated upon for a lot different reasons than feeding oneself. A lot of fish go to waste, so do other animals that get killed. Its still an ongoing problem that has no end until there's nothing to catch.

I originally come from a small European country, with little regulations when it comes to fishing, and bribery was a common thing to not be fined if you were fishing during breeding season. There's no fish in those rivers for all the years I lived there. When I was younger we could sit for 3 days and catch nothing at all. You could only enjoy catching fish in private lakes where they replaced the fish each year...., paying a fee for the service..

 

[sciencefiction]

Some reading for those that think fish are dumb, The full text is in the link below.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170426-why-fish-do-not-deserve-their-reputation-for-forgetfulness

There is something fishy about our attitude to fish.

This widely-held belief may persist due to an unconscious bias, based on an old-fashioned view of how evolution works. Culum Brown of Macquarie University in Australia, who is also assistant editor of the Journal of Fish Biology, suspects that many people underestimate how smart fish are because they assume fish are primitive creatures.

It is also possible we subconsciously underestimate the cognitive abilities of fish because they live in such a different habitat to our own; because we have been duped by films that perpetuate the myth that fish are amnesiacs; or because we simply assume they are unintelligent to avoid feeling guilty when tucking into a fish finger sandwich.

"The reality is that most of the fish on the planet today evolved around the same time as humans," he says.
"Most aspects [of] their cognitive abilities are just as good as most terrestrial animals, and in many cases exceed them," says Brown.

The humble goldfish can remember things for three months, and can even tell the time in a rudimentary way. For a 1994 study, researchers trained goldfish to push a lever that worked for one hour a day in exchange for a reward. The fish learned to take advantage of this window of opportunity, demonstrating that they could keep track of time, learn and remember.Brown says many fish can recall details for a very long time. For instance, the crimson-spotted rainbowfish (Melanotaenia duboulayi) can remember escape routes to evade danger for 11 months, according to a study he published in 2001.

Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) can solve a maze consisting of six consecutive T-junctions. The popular pets not only learned to complete the puzzle, but over a five-day training period they got faster and made fewer errors, according to a study published in February 2017.

The fish's performance was surprising and could be compared to that of rats, says lead author Tyrone Lucon-Xiccato of the University in Padova in Italy.
"Rodents are expected to be successful in similar tasks because they have evolved to live in burrow systems similar to that of a maze. But conversely, fish usually live in very different environments and therefore were not expected to rapidly learn the maze."

He says guppies may have evolved their navigational abilities because, in the wild, they live in streams that are strewn with obstacles.

Fish, like mammals, have an excellent sense of space. They draw on incoming sensory information such as hydrostatic pressure to work out their position in three-dimensional space, according to a 2016 study.

Theresa Burt de Perera of the University of Oxford says that fish can encode space in 3D, whereas land-dwelling animals like us have trouble with the vertical dimension. Unlike rats, fish can accurately judge vertical distance. Brown says fish's ability to track depth makes them "superior to humans" in this respect.

There is also tentative evidence that fish have something similar to "place cells". These cells, which have been found in rats, are neurons that fire when the animal occupies a specific location within its environment. Different place cells fire in different locations, so they are thought to be the seat of a neural map of space in mammals.

The apparent fish "place cells" are in an area of their brain that is equivalent to the human hippocampus. The fish might use them to create a memory of the space around them.

As well as navigating, fish can use tools – a skill once thought to belong exclusively to humans.

Several of the brightly-coloured marine fish called wrasses crush sea urchins against rocks to access the meat inside. Meanwhile, South American cichlids and hoplo catfish (Hoplosternum thoracatum) glue their eggs to leaves and small rocks, which they use as portable nurseries if their nests are under threat, according to a 2012 review paper by Brown.

Perhaps the most impressive tool-using fish is the archerfish (Toxotes chatareus), which uses water as a tool or weapon, much as we might throw a ball. The fish squirts a jet from its mouth like a water pistol to hit insects above the water's surface. It even takes light refraction into account.

Stefan Schuster of the University of Bayreuth in Germany is a leading authority on archerfish. He has demonstrated that juvenile archerfish appear to learn the complex hunting method by watching more experienced hunters – even though they do not have a brain region called the neocortex, which is associated with sight in mammals.

After taking a shot and hitting its target, the archerfish calculates where its dinner will land and sets off at top speed to grab it ahead of its rivals. It can do this in as little as 40 milliseconds. "These decisions are most remarkable in their combination of speed and complexity," says Schuster.

In a sense, the archerfish is performing ballistics calculations. But of course, it is "doing the maths" at an intuitive level, much like a good footballer can quickly make a perfect pass and anticipate where another player will receive it, without working out trajectories.

Archerfish can also discriminate between human faces, a task previously only accomplished by primates.

They can pick out a familiar face from a sea of 44 new faces, according to a 2016 study. Researchers trained the fish to identify a familiar face by shooting it with a jet of water, and discovered that they could make the distinction up to 89% of the time.

"The fact that archerfish can learn this task suggests that complicated brains are not necessarily needed to recognise human faces," says author Cait Newport of the University of Oxford.

Gee says there is a chance pet goldfish may be able to recognise their owners' faces, although there is no evidence so far – and wild goldfish live in murky waters, which may mean they do not rely on vision as much as archerfish.

However, much like birds, fish can distinguish between quantities.

In a 2013 study, researchers found that newborn guppies can choose the larger of two groups of dots. "The fact that newborn fish can learn to distinguish between two groups of objects differing in number reinforces the idea that numerical abilities might be at least partially displayed at birth," says author Christian Agrillo of the University of Padova.

Judging quantities is important for fish, because they often avoid predators by joining large shoals. Several studies have shown that fish prefer to join the larger of two shoals when placed in an unknown environment.

Agrillo believes fish are as adept at quantifying small groups as mammals and birds. If that is true, it would suggest that our numerical abilities may be older than we thought. They could even date back to the divergence between fish and land vertebrates, approximately 450 million years ago.

As well as "counting", fish can work together – even with members of other species.

Coralgroupers (Plectropomus pessuliferus) and coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus) both sometimes team up with snake-like giant moray eels (Gymnothorax javanicus) to flush out prey that are hiding in small crevices.

The trout and grouper both shake their heads to invite a moray to come hunting.

In a 2014 study, biologists showed that coral trout quickly learn to choose the most effective eel hunters. They used a set-up in which food was out of reach. The trout quickly worked out when they needed a collaborator to help them get the food, and they were three times more likely to choose an effective moray teammate over an ineffective one.

The experiment "strengthens the case that a relatively small brain, compared to warm-blooded species, does not stop at least some fish species from possessing cognitive abilities that compare to or even surpass those of apes," says study author Alexander Vail of the University of Cambridge.

A goldfish aimlessly circling its bowl may not be as smart as this. But archerfish and other species are helping to challenge our perceptions of fish intelligence. Schuster says this should put our own cognitive abilities into context, because clearly impressive brainpower evolved long before humans.

However, it remains to be seen whether our newfound appreciation of fish intelligence will ever be enough to put us all off eating fish and chips.

 

[zozo]

They are far more intelligent than we realize.
Sébastien Moro wrote a comic book to debunk the clichés about fish's cognitive skills.

 

[DutchMuch]

Ok as per the title;
i would be scared for my life 24/7 cause 99% of the time i would end up in a tiny 1/2 gallon bowl with pink gravel no filter and no heater.
Then die 2 days if that later.
Amen.

 

[goldscapes]

Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) can solve a maze consisting of six consecutive T-junctions. The popular pets not only learned to complete the puzzle, but over a five-day training period they got faster and made fewer errors, according to a study published in February 2017.

The fish's performance was surprising and could be compared to that of rats, says lead author Tyrone Lucon-Xiccato of the University in Padova in Italy.
"Rodents are expected to be successful in similar tasks because they have evolved to live in burrow systems similar to that of a maze. But conversely, fish usually live in very different environments and therefore were not expected to rapidly learn the maze."

He says guppies may have evolved their navigational abilities because, in the wild, they live in streams that are strewn with obstacles.

Ok, so who’s going to be the first member to scape a maze?

 

[goldscapes]

Seriously though, anyone interested in this should read up on Cephalopods, they are probably the most advanced alternative (to human/mammalian) intelligence on the planet - but please don’t try putting them in a aquarium!

 

[mort]

Seriously though, anyone interested in this should read up on Cephalopods, they are probably the most advanced alternative (to human/mammalian) intelligence on the planet - but please don’t try putting them in a aquarium!

I've raised Sepia bandensis from eggs and had them spawn a new generation before the horrible natural process of senescence. I'd never attempt to keep any of the bigger cuttlefish or octopus but believe these little cuttles had a very good and enriching life.
I only had them to begin with because the eggs were a box filler in an import I had. They were probably the most rewarding and heartbreaking thing I've ever looked after.