According to biologist Culum Brown, an associate professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and the author of a new study about fish sentience and intelligence, the potential amount of cruelty that humans inflict on fish is mind-boggling. Many of us give little thought to the welfare of fish, but Brown’s research added to what we already know about these animals and should dispel any outdated notions that fish are merely swimming entrées.
Each fish is an individual — a who, not a what — and when we look at the science and not just our tired assumptions, it’s pretty clear that we need to treat fish better. We could start by not eating them.
Brown’s study, which was published in June in Animal Cognition, presents evidence that fish have excellent long-term memories, live in complex social groups, learn from other fish and develop cultural traditions.
Rainbowfish, for example, can learn how to escape a net via a single hole after only five trial runs. More impressively, they can remember the escape route a year later. This is remarkable for a fish that only lives for two years in the wild, Brown said.
Fish can recognize themselves and others, they cooperate with one another and can use tools.
Catfish and cichlids have been observed gluing their eggs to leaves and small rocks so that they can carry the precious cargo to safety. Video footage shot by a University of California-Santa Cruz professor shows an orange-dotted tuskfish, a type of wrasse, repeatedly tossing a clam against a rock in order to crack open the shell.
When cleaner fish, who nibble parasites and dead tissue off of larger, predator fish, accidentally bite their clients, they make amends by giving the larger fish back rubs.
Fish talk to one another underwater — even to other species. When prey fish slip into cracks in a coral reef, coral groupers wait until a moray eel or a Napoleon wrasse shows up. Then they point their nose toward the concealed fish and shake their body from side to side — a form of fish sign language — and the obliging eel or wrasse flushes out the tasty morsel.
Male pufferfish make art in order to attract mates. The tiny fish work tirelessly for days to create ornate circles up to 7 feet in diameter on the seafloor, which they decorate with shell fragments.
Fish can count and tell time, they think ahead and they have unique personalities.
They can feel pain just as other vertebrates do. In fact, Brown argues that it would be impossible for fish to survive as the cognitively and behaviorally complex animals they are without a capacity to feel pain.
The Farm Animal Welfare Committee, an advisory body to the British government, agrees. In a report published in February, the organization states, Fish are able to detect and respond to noxious stimuli, and FAWC supports the increasing scientific consensus that they experience pain.
Yet despite the evidence that fish are smart, sentient animals with a capacity for suffering, we continue to kill them by the billions every year for our dinner plates. Fish who are dragged out of their ocean homes in huge nets (along with unintended victims such as turtles and seabirds) suffocate slowly or are crushed to death. Farmed fish suffer from stress, infections and parasites as a result of crowded, filthy and unnatural living conditions.
It’s time for a sea change. We should pay attention to what science is showing us (and what common sense has told us all along): Fish are intelligent, complex animals who deserve compassion. It’s really no loss to us to choose vegetable sushi or faux fish filets and let fish live in peace.
Chicago Tribune