Most people dismiss fish as dim-witted pea-brains that spend all day swimming around doing…well, nothing.
BUT...
Reference: Faunalytics ( Article: Companion Animal Fundamentals)
๐ Goldfish:
Can live for decades under the right conditions, with some living past 40 years old, they have;
- Facial Recognition - can recognise and distinguish between faces
- Better Memory - Goldfish having short memories is a myth! Research finds they can remember up to three months
- Vision - Goldfish can see more colours than humans, because they can see the UV and infrared ends of the spectrum
Reference: The Human League
๐ Fish:
- Can get sunburned
- Only saltwater fish drink water
- They sleep
- Half of all fish species live in freshwater habitats which have less than 0.01% of Earth’s total water
Reference: ‘Faunalytics’ - FARMED ANIMAL FUNDAMENTALS
Fish experience positive and negative emotional states, similar to mammals and other animals
๐ Fish experience pain like other animals
:- they “feel pain in ‘exactly the same way we do.’” When they’re pulled out of the water, they experience stress such that their stress hormones are “exactly the same as a person drowning,” except that the fish experience this agony for 20 to 30 minutes.
- fish have nervous systems that comprehend and respond to pain.
- There are more than 20 pain receptors, or “nociceptors,” in fish’s mouths and heads
Playing & Petting - Some species of fishes like to play games, and even be "petted" by humans
Fish pass down cultural knowledge from generation to generation
๐ Memory
:- Some species of fishes that "match or exceed" other vertebrates
- Their spatial memory allows them to create cognitive maps that guide them through their watery homes, using cues such as polarised light, sounds, odours, and visual landmarks
- Australian crimson spotted rainbow fish, which learnt to escape from a net in their tank, remembered how they did it 11 months later. This is equivalent to a human recalling a lesson learnt 40 years ago.”
- They exhibit stable cultural traditions and cooperate to inspect predators and catch food.
๐ More Fascinating Facts About Fish
:- Fish talk to each other using squeaks, squeals, and other low-frequency sounds that humans can hear only with special instruments.
- They also communicate through “sign language” or “Morse code.” Lion fish wave the row of fins on their backs in a specific way to signal other fish to join them in a hunt. Large coral groupers alert smaller, more slender fish, like moray eels, to prey fish concealed in a crevice by pointing their noses toward the concealed fish and shaking their bodies from side to side—the obliging eel then flushes out the prey.
- They like physical contact with other fish and often gently rub against one another—in the same way that a cat weaves in and out of your legs.
- Phil Gee, a psychologist at the University of Plymouth in the U.K., trained fish to collect food by pressing a lever at specific times, demonstrating their ability to tell time.
- Some tend well-kept gardens, encouraging the growth of tasty algae and weeding out the types that they don’t prefer.
- Like birds, many fish build nests in which they can raise their babies, while others collect little rocks off the sea floor to make hiding places where they can rest. Catfish and cichlids have been observed gluing their eggs to leaves and small rocks so that they can carry the precious cargo to safety.
- Some fish woo potential partners by singing to them or creating art for them, but male sand gobies—tiny fish who live along the European coast—play “Mr. Mom,” building and guarding nests and fanning the eggs with their fins in order to create a current of fresh, oxygenated water.
- Scientists documented that cichlids would play with a bottom-weighted thermometer, intentionally knocking it over just so that they could watch it bounce back up again.
- When cleaner fish—who nibble parasites and dead tissue off larger, predator fish—accidentally bite their “clients,” they make amends by giving the larger fish back rubs.
- Fish even use tools. The blackspot tusk fish, for example, has been photographed smashing a clam on a rock until the shell breaks open. Pearl fish use oyster shells as speakers to help amplify the volume of their communications.
- Goldfish have longer “sustained attention” spans than humans, according to a study by Microsoft, which found that the small fish can concentrate for nine seconds compared to eight for humans.
- Fish are interesting and intelligent animals who deserve the same respect that we give to “cute” and cuddly animals such as dogs and cats.
