Do fish get bored?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
cabezon said:
fish have no thoughts, just reactions. They know you are the source of food. that's about it. The bigger the brain the more thinking that goes on. fish brains are just not big enough. I dont understand this two second rule, what are they remembering and forgetting?
Click to expand...

They had to learn that we are the source of food. So if capable of learning that, what else might they be capable of learning?

They also learn who they should fear and who they can dominate in a fish tank as well.

They also seem to know where others territory is, and what is and is not food.

See what I am getting at? Its not as simple as saying something is so unless you have a Ph.D in Marine Biology as well as in Neurochemistry. I dont, and so far no one here has shown they do either. Id like things kept as their opinion rather than fact unless they can prove so. Any more than that and it becomes insulting to say that one person's views are wrong since YOU feel they are.

Matt
 
Who knew this would be such a heated topic lol. I agree with mrg02d, Taylor and the others that think similarly. Brain size has little to do with it IMO. Think about rats and mice. They have been trained to do some pretty complex tasks.
 
I have to disagree. There have been tests that have shown that fish can indeed "remember" things.

One test on Mythbusters they took goldfish in a tank and then put clear dividers in the tank with holes in it, large enough for the fish to swim through, at different levels. Sorta like a maze.

Then they put food on the other side of the dividers. After the goldfish successfully figured out where the holes were once, they would go right through those spots to get to the food in future trials, getting faster and faster. They learned the correct path and then remembered to take it. This isn't "muscle memory" but true memory.

A couple of other sources as well:
Do Fish Have Memories? | A Moment of Science - Indiana Public Media
Three-second memory myth: Fish can remember for up to five months | Mail Online
 
I have bettas and when a friend tries to feed them they flip out and hide.
Like dogs and people, though, some fish are smarter than others.
 
Indeed they can. Mine love playing in the filter output stream. <-- What's that called?
 
I have no idea but I know Alejandro loves to ride the bubbles from the air stone like a fishy roller coaster lol.
 
rusilja said:
I don't think so, fish have a memory of 2 seconds. It's like living for 2 seconds... How boring is that
Click to expand...

They proved this wrong on mythbusters. They were able to train the fish to go through a maze of brightly colored rings at different heights to finally get food. It was really neat. I'd try looking on youtube for it, they might have some clips.
 
Well, I'm thinking that it might be true to some extent. Humans have a short term memory of around 15-30 minutes, and repetition makes it go into long term memory. 2 seconds seems a bit short, but I'm guessing that fish have both types as well.
 
taylorodw said:
After looking around that website, I came across this:
BBC NEWS | UK | England | West Yorkshire | Scientists highlight fish 'intelligence'

That pretty much goes directly against what cabezon and rusilja said.
Click to expand...

recognizing members of your shoal does not exactly qualify a fish for MENSA.

You'll note intelligence is in quotes. remembering where to get food or mates does put the fish above the amoeba as far as intelligence. But I seriously doubt that a fish is cognizant and thinks about things. Sorry.

swimming against a output might be stimulating and "fun" and the fish might remember where to go for it, but I seriously doubt he is going, "Hey Bobby, you want to go to the water park today, I'm bored."
 
I think the whole swimming against flow might be similar to swimming to the surface to fill their stomach with air or maybe something like how rodents run in wheels.
 
My loaches swim laps around the bubbles for fun lol.

My bettas come to the EXACT same spot every day for their food, and start jumping out of the water. My gourami spits water at me when he wants food. My BGK knew that he could take his food out of the meds dropper and not have to wait for it to fall down, he would also shoot from one side of the tank to the feeding side when he heard me coming. If that's not memory, I don't know what it is....
 
I don't know, and I'm not trying to take one side over the other, but maybe the bettas always come to the same spot because that is where you started to feed them, and it has become sort of a habit (somewhat instinctual). I'd liken it to how salmon go upstream to the exact same spot to where they were born to spawn. The spawning behavior isn't conscious, so maybe it's similar to this? That said, fish DO have personality, which supports the conscious argument, so since they have personality, they must have perferences and therefore make conscious decisions.
 
It's not where I started to feed them though. When they were first in the tanks, there were no filters, so I would just put the food wherever. Now that there are filters on all sides, I have to go to a certain place. *shrug*
 
Instincts cannot be learned. Animals are born with all the instincts that they will ever know. Any behavior they exhibit after the fact (like going to the same place to eat all the time) is a learned behavior...

Your salmon example is actually one of the behaviors that scientists point to that fish have memory. Salmon remember what the water smells like where they spawned, and that is how they find their way back.
 
My Clownfish sticks his nose above the water when he see's I have the food in my hand. He doesn't do this if I don't have the food in my hand.

He recognises the food container and then puts his nose above the water.
 
...

I just found this. Takashi Amano is feeding his fish (sweet tank too btw). I think fish do have memory, because they would not know that it's feeding time like that. . . .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

V
Im lost...
Replies
15
Views
533
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
A
Fry tanks
Replies
2
Views
199
Aiken Drum
Aiken Drum
M
Is it even possible to have an Uncycled SW tank?
Replies
2
Views
812
Andy Sager
Andy Sager
L
neon tetra dying - help
Replies
7
Views
449
Lila
L
S
Critique my rack layout. Does it look stable?
Replies
1
Views
278
Andy Sager
Andy Sager

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom