Proof that fish do have feelings

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We have to be careful not to anthropomorphize. If an animal isn't self aware how could they have emotions? Fish aren't as dumb as most people think they are (one of my greatest joys in the hobby is training fish), but they don't compare to cats, dogs, and the rabbits I have trained. Of course I can only look at this through a learning stand point in intelligence.
 
We have to be careful not to anthropomorphize. If an animal isn't self aware how could they have emotions? Fish aren't as dumb as most people think they are (one of my greatest joys in the hobby is training fish), but they don't compare to cats, dogs, and the rabbits I have trained. Of course I can only look at this through a learning stand point in intelligence.

Well that's just it.. i think sometimes human emotion births this idea of fish emotion..

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Every fish forum,or for that matter animal related forum has this topic pop up a couple times every year, if not more often. It always tends to get heated, at times ending up with a mod stepping in to close it, unhappy members with a time out & such.

That is due to some people being the thinking sort, others being the feeling sort, and each end of the spectrum doesn't take the time to try to understand the thought process of the other. Here's a link for a bit of understanding; Thinking vs. Feeling | Prelude Character Analysis

So, what you have here in this topic is a clash between thinking types & feeling types, rational thought vs emotional thought. Either one taken too far is not a good thing; generally society will let you know if you’ve gone too far either direction. I think we all waver between the two extremes, depending on the situation. Most often we tread closer towards the middle more than anything.

I'll talk to my dogs, like complete sentences as if they understand what I'm saying, but I realize they don't. I'll laugh at my fish & call them hungry babies even though I realize they're the furthest thing from a baby. It's hard not to do this at times, probably helps us with the mental organization of our world. Thinking & acting as if animals have or show human emotions is more to our own benefit than anything else, when you realize this & don't take it to the extreme of animals being actually capable of feeling the wide range of human emotions on a human level it's all good.

The other end of the extreme is those that think animals have no feelings whatsoever. Oh well, it's just a fish. Oh well, it's just a dog. Oh well, you're getting dangerously close to oh well it's just a human. Stick to the middle ground of caring & nurturing without anthropomorphizing to some wild & crazy extent & life makes more sense.
 
I think it's pretty dumb to say they don't have feelings.. Any living thing with a brain has feelings and emotions. We don't know goes on in there tiny brain. The people on here trying to say animals don't have emotion or feelings are ignorant and probably shouldn't have any pets. Fish aren't going to have emotions about u because they r supposed to be in a lake or ocean and we keep them in little aquariums


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sure we know what's going in their brains, as well as ours, ever hear of an EEG, or even better yet MRI imaging where you can see in real time the blood flow and activity in the brain. It is pretty solid science.
Again, fish simply do not have the wiring to feel emotions, certainly not what is commonly considered emotional responses.
It really all has to do with brain structure and size, there being a direct correlation between the size, density and crenulations and giri (folds and crevices which afford greater surface area for the cortical tissue) of the cerebral cortex, the greater these attributes are, the greater a sense of "self" and more cognitive processing of instinctive behaviors.
We humans carry on every day acting on instinct that has been modified and filtered by generations of socialization and codification in order to facilitate the survival of the group.

Keeping on the topic of water critters, Dolphins possess a brain size/structure very similar to ours and research has confirmed their intelligence many times over.
What has also been discovered that is unique in the animal kingdom and has only been seen in a few higher primates is a sense of self awareness.
Most animals and even infants up to about 18-20 months of age really make no distinction between others and themselves. a simple example is that an infant or a cat is hungry, in their mind EVERYONE is hungry and experiencing the same sensations they are. It is actually the basis for the terrible twos', At that age children begin to develop a sense of self and start to assert that sense of self because "I don't have to do what mom says" they understand they have choice unique to themselves.
anyway, the dolphin research entailed simply taking a magic marker and drawing simple symbols on their bellies in a way that they had to go look in a mirror to see it. Very quickly the dolphins began to show each other their symbols and essentially compare them and would eagerly go to the surface to get a new symbol drawn on them. The real kicker was when they started to show a preference for one symbol over another and once they had the symbol that they personally liked, they refused to allow it to be changed and would primp and preen in the mirror and in front of one another. They clearly showed that they were self aware in that the recognized themselves as individuals.

Do Dolphins Have a Sense of Self? - National Wildlife Federation
 
I'll talk to my dogs, like complete sentences as if they understand what I'm saying, but I realize they don't.

well that depends on what you mean by understand. Do they understand English or any other language, no.
But they have learned to associate certain sound combinations coupled with tone and inflection to symbolically represent things in their environment.
That is how any and all language works for humans or anything that communicates audibly.
When I tell my dog to go get his ball, he doesn't come back with a shoe, he comes back with his ball. Now if I told him to get a shoe, he would be slightly confused because the sound "shoo" hasn't been associated with a specific thing/action.
When we are out playing and he is winded and panting, I'll tell him "buddy, go get a drink of water" he drops the ball and goes, drinks his fill, and then goes back to playing, BUT I have ingrained in/trained him what that string of sounds symbolically represents and he understands what action to take.
The same exact principle when teaching a baby to talk the difference being we posses the cognitive ability to make associations that we were not specifically taught.

I know it's off topic, but it is interesting none the less. :)
 
I had a pair of ducks, one was ripped apart by a coyote, the other one stopped eating, drinking and wouldn't move from a bush in our yard. Not even to the pen. It got extremely skinny and finally after a month vanished. Assuming it was ate by a coyote also but not sure there was no sign of a struggle. This duck lost all will to live. It was very sad and that being said I'm sure small brained animals have emotion. Ducks are not very smart like a monkey or a dolphin or cats and dogs. I don't have feeling for my fish I don't name them or talk to them. If one dies I throw it in the garbage, so don't think I'm being some crazy person defending my fish. I just think that the brain chemistry is so different from ours that there is no way to tell if it has emotion threw an MRI. If someone thinks there fish has feeling and you don't then just leave it alone no sense in arguing about it because there's no proof of what goes on in there little heads.


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I had a pair of ducks, one was ripped apart by a coyote, the other one stopped eating, drinking and wouldn't move from a bush in our yard. Not even to the pen. It got extremely skinny and finally after a month vanished. Assuming it was ate by a coyote also but not sure there was no sign of a struggle. This duck lost all will to live. It was very sad and that being said I'm sure small brained animals have emotion. Ducks are not very smart like a monkey or a dolphin or cats and dogs. I don't have feeling for my fish I don't name them or talk to them. If one dies I throw it in the garbage, so don't think I'm being some crazy person defending my fish. I just think that the brain chemistry is so different from ours that there is no way to tell if it has emotion threw an MRI. If someone thinks there fish has feeling and you don't then just leave it alone no sense in arguing about it because there's no proof of what goes on in there little heads.


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Were the ducks a mated pair, that would explain it, plus you misunderstood what I was pointing out.
It isn't that these animals do not "feel" things, it is that they do not posses the higher cognitive ability to apply meaning and significance to the "emotions" whereas humans have developed very complex and intricate methodologies to interpret those feelings/sensations and also to communicate the same to one another.

as far as there being no proof via an MRI, I suggest you do a little more homework on the technology before making that statement. ;)
 
They were both male.. And what this person explained about the fish sounds like emotion to me. If they don't have emotion or feeling I would like people to stop complaining about cycling with fish or undersized aquariums because y does it matter they don't have any feelings


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They were both male.. And what this person explained about the fish sounds like emotion to me. If they don't have emotion or feeling I would like people to stop complaining about cycling with fish or undersized aquariums because y does it matter they don't have any feelings


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I agree about cycling, but you are placing the emphasis on the wrong animal. People do fish less cycling because of their own emotional responses, not because of the fishes.
It's called EMPATHY and is an attribute very unique to humans.

Just because an animal does not have the wiring to COMMUNICATE "feelings" to you as a human, their life is of no value, is that what you are saying?
 
Oh I totally understand about dogs having no idea about what the words actually mean, just what the sounds represent. You could have just as easily taught your dog that the phrase "go eat a squirrel" means to go drink water. I've always taught mine with hand signals along with verbal, in the event they loose one of the senses with age, which has happened.

As far as the ducks, a one off event doesn't even make a trend, much less a fact. I had a dog that ripped the aluminum wrap off my garage door, does he hate aluminum? Does he like the way it tastes? Was he trying to get at mice in the garage? Was he protesting the union busting going on with the bauxite miners?

A thinking person who has owned terriers for decades would probably say it's the mice, a feeling person might say the dog is having his own little union protest. The same individual sort of thinking is often applied to fish.
 
I am glad to see people with different opinions having a discussion without insults and bad manners. So often such philosophical discussions end badly.

Now, as to animals eating each other, I have been around wild animals for 40 years. I have witnessed very few who consume their dead companions. I have found starving dogs laying beside other dogs they were abandoned with and they have not eaten their companion. I do not believe it is as common as we are lead to believe. I have witnessed dogs and cats grieving for lost companions. I have not witnessed fish do this. I still think they have the ability for at least basic emotions. Who knows what will be discovered about them in the future. I have a set of Custow(? spelling? books and he says that ocean animals are working on mindless instinct only. He says this about dolphins, wales and other ocean mammals. Today we recognize that these creatures are self aware and intelligent. We have to allow ourselves to wonder so we will work towards finding out more about our world.
 
I totally agree in that dolphins and whales are out of this world.. the social skills possessed by those creatures is nothing short of amazing. A mother whale that has lost young will wander aimlessly for months calling out.. if that's not grieving I don't know what is.. but I digress... my tetras are not whales, they are mindless little survivors on a never ending quest for sustenance.. as for the furry pets we keep.. i have an ongoing debate with a friend.. i have this amazing little kitten, she locks eyes and through a few little mouthed noises she'll either roll over on her back or run and jump on my lap.. it's pretty cool.. not saying she follows commands but sue recognizes verbal cues. He has a silly little cat dog that doesn't listen to him at all, just follows him around begging for attention.. he says my cat is totally unaware of my presence and couldn't care less.. I say it greets me at the door every day and wants my attention more often than not.. i dunno.. cats are chill, I'd like a little puppy soon though..
Ps. I am digging the civil nature of this potentially chaotic thread;)
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My black moor Ludo is like a dog he always comes to the surface and I pat him on the head then he scuttles off. Lol. BTW I have a black moor male and calico fantail female spawning pair. They do have feelings!! Cause my platy Rodney's s a stubborn git and gets well pissed off if I move his squidworth house about lol

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Just because dogs and cats can show emotion doesn't mean that fish do. As has been mentioned already we know enough about them scientifically to make that assertion. Could it be wrong? Maybe, but I personally would rather stick with the science until proven otherwise.

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My black moor Ludo is like a dog he always comes to the surface and I pat him on the head then he scuttles off. Lol. BTW I have a black moor male and calico fantail female spawning pair. They do have feelings!! Cause my platy Rodney's s a stubborn git and gets well pissed off if I move his squidworth house about lol

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Your black moor comes to the surface for food, you touch him... well that's not food.. i don't like that.. later.. these fish are accustomed to routine, when you move stuff they are accustomed to? it will throw them off.. stressed would be your interpretation of upset or pissed.. all the same.. it's a basic reaction to an obvious stressor.. don't move my stuff and don't touch me just feed me.. nothing more nothing less..

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I've noticed mollies helping an old Molly that had lost movement in the tail. Not sure what to call it - community spirit?? I don't think it was a feeling. Some sort of shoaling behaviour maybe.
 
I find it interesting that fish of the same species can act very differently. I had one Beta that was scared of everything. He would hide at the least amount of movement. My Beta that I have now will challenge anything that comes near him. He comes to the front of the tank when I walk by. He lets me pet him with a finger. He stares at things in his tank like he is figuring things out and then proceeds to change his environment. He learned to shake snail out of their shells to eat them. Is this a sign of different levels of intelligence? Who knows. I have watched my mollies and guppies swim under the filter and then "surf" the water outflow. Then they go around and do it again. Is this playing? It appears that way to me. However, to another, it might seem like something else. As for brain size, Jelly Fish have no brain but manage just fine. They catch food and swim. How is this possible? Is there more than one way to think and feel besides having a brain?
 
This is why I don't let my fish have the TV remote, just in case they watch programs much smarter than me.

I got confused here. Are we talking about higher order(?) feelings like good will to a fellow fish I guess or basic feelings like hunger (bit hazy on this stuff)?
 
:confused:
HUH?
We hunt deer because we killed all their natural predators and if we didn't hunt them they would reproduce to the point of wiping out there habitat and then starving to death, not to mention the havoc they could wreak in suburban communities as the food becomes scarce.
That is why we have deer hunting seasons.:cool:

Perhaps, but I only eat them because they are yummy and good with ketchup.
 
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