I Was Just Wondering

[Truck]

corect me if im wrong but catfish have poor eyesight? thats why they have barbels to scavenge for food?

 

[three-fingers]

I think people are generalising fish way too much here.
Different species of fish have different ways of recognising other fish.
Sight, chemical signals, vibrations in the water and probably more as well as combinations of these things.

Some species posiibly don't even bother telling each other apart beyond 'male', 'female', 'female in breeding condition' and in some cases 'juvenile'.

I'm sorry mate but thats the biggest load of rubbish I've ever heard. Fish with the intellect of a primate or a young child? That's simply not true. Whilst they may show a preference to groups of certain size abd be able to distinguish between groups of certain sizes and choose accordingly, thats not to say they are able to count like you or I would, the 2 are completely different things.
And you have a lot more than 3 cone cells in your eye

If you read it, nobody claimed fish have the 'intellect' of a primate or young child .

All that was said is that they (mosquito fish at least) have a similar counting ability. That does not equate to 'intellect' (a very loosely interpreted term anyway) as a whole.

corect me if im wrong but catfish have poor eyesight? thats why they have barbels to scavenge for food?

Some may have poor eyesight, some may have excellent eyesight. Now catfish are being generalised too much .

 

[Syphoniera]

Actually, I was reading a while back that Neon Tetras have bright colours which enable them to identify each other in dim conditions and maintain the school grouping more easily.
It's things like this whch enable those bearing such characteristics more strongly to survive and pass on the tendency - they don't stand out in order to make things easy for predators, or to ensure they'll be gang-pressed into aquarium life at a later point, lol.

Brainless zombies wouldn't survive in the wild, anyway - they need, and have developed, the type of intelligence suited to their circumstance, not to ours.

 

[andywg]

fish can count and are as intelligent as monkeys or small infants.

If you read it, nobody claimed fish have the 'intellect' of a primate or young child

I would say that someone has made that claim above.

Marilyn sez, "In an experiment at the U. of Padua last year, female mosquito fish preferred to join shoals that were larger by just one fish, 'preferring shoals of four fish rather than three fish, and consistently preferring shoals of three fish over those containing just two.'"
This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability.
Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy said: "We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities."

Much of the above seems to be copypasta from this Torygraph article. At the foot of that article is the comment that:

Without training, adult rhesus monkeys are capable of subtracting small numbers, and are capable of representing the number zero.

This seems somewhat greater counting ability than a fish that can recognise that 3 is more than 2 and 4 is greater than 3. Sounds to me like the article picked up some fairly outrageous claims by the lead researcher who was, no doubt, trying to secure the next source of funds to continue research.

Also interesting to note is that some people hypothesise that Rhesus monkies may be able to count to infinity whilst the study which provided the above found fish could not accurately differentiate between 12 and 8.

 

[three-fingers]

I would say that someone has made that claim above.

Indeed they have. I've not been reading well today.

In that case, I should have posted in response to fishyfeet - counting ability isnt the same as intellect as a whole .

Also interesting to note is that some people hypothesise that Rhesus monkies may be able to count to infinity whilst the study which provided the above found fish could not accurately differentiate between 12 and 8.

Counting to infinity? Is that like dividing by zero?
Monkeys are crazy.

 

[Truck]

isnt infinity an imaginary number, so has no finite value

 

[shroob]

First off sorry for the long post, I understand if people don't want to read it all . I got bored during my break between lessons at uni (found out having litsearch has some advantages) and found these articles in various journals, so I posted the abstracts. I highlighted in italics the main bits or summaries.

We examined interspecific female mating preferences in four closely related species of cichlid belonging to the Pseudotropheus zebra species complex of Lake Malawi. These species differ in coloration but are similar in other respects, suggesting that male color patterns may be important to female mate choice in species recognition. To test this hypothesis, we presented females from each species with a choice of four males, one of her own species and three others that were each of a different species. We also gave each female a choice between the three heterospecific males only. In all four species, females showed a significant preference for conspecific males in the four-way choice and chose the male with the most similar color pattern to the conspecific male in the three-way choice. These results are discussed with reference to the theory of sexual selection on color patterns as a means of sympatric speciation in cichlids.
Behavioral Ecology [Behav. Ecol.]. Vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 59-64. Jan-Feb 2002

Most theories of social behaviour and cooperation assume that animals can recognise other individuals, but this is rarely tested. Using Neolamprologus brichardi, a cooperatively breeding cichlid fish, we monitored behavioural responses to (1) real fish versus video images of fish; (2) mate versus neighbour and (3) video images of mate versus video image of neighbour. All tests were controlled for size and sex. Fish reacted appropriately to the playbacks, although responses to videos were not as strong as to real fish. Both males and females fought against the images of stranger and neighbour fish and they courted images of mates. These results confirm that the cooperatively breeding fish, Neolamprologus brichardi, recognises individuals based on vision and that video playbacks contain sufficient information to facilitate recognition.
Behaviour [Behaviour]. Vol. 135, no. 3, pp. 369-386. May 1998.

Evidence from a number of freshwater species indicates that fish prefer to school with familiar individuals. Do they also choose to associate with kin? Our experiment tested this idea using the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, a species whose reproductive biology favours the association of kin groups. Juveniles reared together were able to recognise one another on the basis of either visual or chemical cues, but showed no preference for schooling with unfamiliar kin. We therefore conclude that any naturally occurring kin groups in this species will occur as a result of familiarity rather than as a consequence of kin recognition based on phenotype matching.
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology [Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.]. Vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 437-443. 12 May 1999.

It was hard trying to filter out what was relevant, had to use quite a few search terms so if anyone has any suggestions or requests for key words I'd be happy to type them in and see what comes up.

I found some more, but to put on one post would be abit long. From what I found it basically said that fish use visual and chemical means (eg. smell) to recognise each other.
Another article goes into how guppies can remember high and lower threat predators (a crenicichla vs. a blue acara) as guppies from a high predation area reacted differently than those guppies of a low predation area.

Hopefully someone will find this interesting or useful.

EDIT: I didn't post this while at uni, just found the info and emailed it to me when I could paste it at home. At uni at nearly 9 o'clock no thanks .

 

[joecoral]

think you should do some research before posting.....

meaning what exactly? what in my post is incorrect which I should have better researched first?
If you're referring to the fact that I stated there are more than 3 cone cells in the eye, there are, several million to be exact.
I am well aware that there are 3 types of cone cell, but the poster to which I was referring didnt state types, they just said "they have 3 cones"
And if you read my post it says "more than 3 cone cells" NOT "more than 3 types of cone cell"

 

[andywg]

I recall reading that most fish cease schooling (not sure on shoaling) at night and as such an assumption is for vision to play a part in schooling.