Proof fish have feelings ❤️

[Spookybeagle]

Hi all,

It's great to be here and I look forward to reading all your posts on my fish keeping journey

I thought I'd share a video with you showing one of my young Platys trying to save the life of a dying Platy. He starts off trying to push him up from side to side and about halfway through the video it gathers some food in his mouth and tries to feed the dying Platy. It eventually manages to get the fish up and comes back to check up on him. I was absolutely gobsmacked as I've never seen this before and thought it was breathtaking. It's proof that fish do have feelings and compassion

I couldn't upload the video as it's too long so I've attached a screenshot of my you tube name if you want to have a look. Unless someone can advise how I can upload the video.

Enjoy

 

[Aiken Drum]

Welcome to the forum. Looking forward to seeing and hearing about what you are getting up to.

Uploading video onto our site isnt possible, but you can copy and paste links from hosting sites like YouTube into a message.

 

[Spookybeagle]

That's great, thank you

 

[Andy Sager]

Welcome to the group The long video definitely helped figure out what was happening. I hate to burst your bubble but what you had there was a male ( the smaller fish) trying to court a dying or injured female ( the larger fish). So what you saw was more passion than compassion. As for it being " feelings" however , almost all male livebearer fish are genetically programmed to mate as often as possible and males are known to literally pester a single female to death trying to mate with her. ( This is why it's always best to get livebearers in trios or higher vs pairs so that there are more females than males to spread out his attention instead of it being concentrated on a single female. ) Females on the other hand get to control whether they accept the inserted sperm ( milt) and allow it to fertilize her eggs. So they do get to have some control of the situation since they can't control the act.
The anthropomorphizing of fish has long been done but the reality is, they do not have the higher intellect to do that other then when mating is involved. This was really shown with wild caught Betta fish of the B. splenden family. The males would literally "dance" to attract a female and get really cozy with her for mating but once the spawning was done, would kill her if she didn't leave the area. While it's not as common to happen with today's Bettas as they have been so genetically altered from inbreeding, the ones I was breeding back in the 1960s and 70s were a terror. It was impossible to keep a male and female in the tank together except for breeding. So that dancing wasn't more a rouse than a human trait.
Hope this better explains what you saw.

Once again, welcome to the group.

 

[Spookybeagle]

Welcome to the group The long video definitely helped figure out what was happening. I hate to burst your bubble but what you had there was a male ( the smaller fish) trying to court a dying or injured female ( the larger fish). So what you saw was more passion than compassion. As for it being " feelings" however , almost all male livebearer fish are genetically programmed to mate as often as possible and males are known to literally pester a single female to death trying to mate with her. ( This is why it's always best to get livebearers in trios or higher vs pairs so that there are more females than males to spread out his attention instead of it being concentrated on a single female. ) Females on the other hand get to control whether they accept the inserted sperm ( milt) and allow it to fertilize her eggs. So they do get to have some control of the situation since they can't control the act.
The anthropomorphizing of fish has long been done but the reality is, they do not have the higher intellect to do that other then when mating is involved. This was really shown with wild caught Betta fish of the B. splenden family. The males would literally "dance" to attract a female and get really cozy with her for mating but once the spawning was done, would kill her if she didn't leave the area. While it's not as common to happen with today's Bettas as they have been so genetically altered from inbreeding, the ones I was breeding back in the 1960s and 70s were a terror. It was impossible to keep a male and female in the tank together except for breeding. So that dancing wasn't more a rouse than a human trait.
Hope this better explains what you saw.

Once again, welcome to the group.

Hi Andy,

Thank you for the welcome

And thank you for the explanation. However, I need to disagree about what is happening here. The dying Platy is a male fish and the smaller fish is actually his offspring so this doesn't fit with the mating scenario you provided

Your explanation also doesn't explain why the offspring was feeding his dying parent. That wouldn't be passion related but more compassion related.

I'm more than happy to stand corrected though

 

[Aiken Drum]

Platys will definitely breed with their offspring. Mothers will breed with sons, brothers with sisters. They really don't care about that sort of thing.

They arent seeing a dying parent, just another fish to breed with.

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi Andy,

Thank you for the welcome

And thank you for the explanation. However, I need to disagree about what is happening here. The dying Platy is a male fish and the smaller fish is actually his offspring so this doesn't fit with the mating scenario you provided

The dying fish looks awfully round to be a male but that could also explain why the fish was dying.

Your explanation also doesn't explain why the offspring was feeding his dying parent. That wouldn't be passion related but more compassion related.

Unfortunately, male livebearers ( Guppies, Platies, Mollies, Swordtails, etc) will try to breed with males, females, strangers, relatives, your hand, the family cat or dog or even the a fake fish statue in the tank. No one is safe. I always recommend to people that if they don't want offspring to overwhelm the tank, keep males only. Even with that, you will see breeding behavior between the males. It's like they have a "brain worm" that controls their sexual appetite and tells the fish "If it swims, breed with it." It's like they have no moral compass. The feeding aspect of this is a different aspect but it's highly unlikely the feeding is more than an offering for sex vs trying to care for a dying fish. In my younger years, I was a commercial fish breeder and have bred over 200 species of fish. In keeping fish genetics straight, or to emphasize a genetic trait, it's necessary to breed parents to offspring and brothers to sisters. There is no hesitancy on the fish's part to breed with a relative. This is true for all the fish species I've bred so to see anything other than an action to breed is really way outside the fish's " normal" behavior. We humans like to believe that all animals have compassion but the reality is, there are some that do but most that don't. That's the law of the jungle. I've had my own experience with the confusion. I bred Oscar fish. I had so many pairs that I also bred comet goldfish to feed them all. With one of my pairs of Oscars, I had removed a spawn, approximately 500 fry, and the next day added a net full of young goldfish for the parents to feed on as usual. These were young comets so they hadn't yet changed from their juvenile copper/brown color to gold yet. Instead of the Oscars eating them all as they usually did, they herded the comets and treated them like their lost school of fry. Some may call this compassion but I call it confusion. Oscars are highly intelligent fish so it's not like this was a concerted effort on the Oscar's part to care for the goldfish vs eating them. It was a case of mistaken identity because the fish were still in "parent mode". I know this because once I put some gold colored comets in the tank, the parents ate them then the rest of the comets they had been caring for. So compassion turned into a dinner buffet.

I'm more than happy to stand corrected though

I too have no problem being corrected so keep that camera rolling because I'd like to see this behavior repeated with other fish as well. It becomes an actual trait when it's repeated consistently. ( If nothing else, watching fish all day and night is a great way to spend a day. )

 

[Aiken Drum]

Im reminded of something. Search on YouTube or similar for videos of "swans feeding fish". This is a common example of people anthropomorphing animals. The swans arent feeding the fish, to consume the food the swan needs to soften it in the water. So they pick up the food with their beak, spit it into the water, then eat the softened the food after its been in the water a short while. The fish are just taking advantage of the food in the water. People see what they want to see.

Fish similarly often swalllow food, chew it a bit, spit it back out if they dont like the texture, maybe they go back and try it again once it's softens some more, maybe they don't and it drops to the substrate to be eaten by whatever clean up crew you have in the aquarium. That's what I see in the video. One fish harassing another fish, either because the fish is clearly not well or to breed. And normal feeding behaviour.