Can Fish Communicate?

[bennett418]

Seriously, can they?

I was watching my fish for ages last night and they def "talk"

how do the two peppered cories no exactly where each one is and almost follow blindly

the barbs that i have (see sig) well they sometimes shoal and then sometimes i will catch them in there own groups

ie green, tiger and albino, which to me means they must be able to distinguish either colours OR each other?

 

[finchfarm]

I think any animal can talk to each other in some way. Dogs can talk to each other by vocalizations (growling, barking, whining, ect.) and by body language (raising hackles, lip curling, tail wagging, play bowing, ect.). Though the "language" might not necessarily be the same I think everything can communiate in some way or another, some speices are just more subtle about it than others.

 

[DanDanUK]

I think any animal can talk to each other in some way. Dogs can talk to each other by vocalizations (growling, barking, whining, ect.) and by body language (raising hackles, lip curling, tail wagging, play bowing, ect.). Though the "language" might not necessarily be the same I think everything can communiate in some way or another, some speices are just more subtle about it than others.

Fish use body language to comunicate rather than speak, it's body language indicates as follows, such as a flinch when a larger fish comes towards it from the fish nipping another, and there's fish knowing there place by moving out of the way when larger fish come to feed.

thats how fish comunicate, i think it would be false to ask if fish can talk because IMO the answer would be NO.

 

[thegnu]

i know my a. cacatuoides female does with her fry. when i turn their light off at night i leave the door to the kitchen open so just enough light is on for me to see. she flicks her ventral fins and they just drop to the bottom, all 80 or so. then she picks them up in her mouth and places them in a pit she dug under some bogwood where she also laid her eggs

 

[bennett418]

Nah obvioulsy they cant talk but there is something there for sure.

body language is the easy one, but the way that the cories swim without looking for each other but always no where the other one is

as for fish moving, all the barbs move out of the way of the gourami, which is weird as they are meant to be "horrible"

watched them all last night and there was no nipping at all, chasing each other but not nipping

 

[finchfarm]

I think any animal can talk to each other in some way. Dogs can talk to each other by vocalizations (growling, barking, whining, ect.) and by body language (raising hackles, lip curling, tail wagging, play bowing, ect.). Though the "language" might not necessarily be the same I think everything can communiate in some way or another, some speices are just more subtle about it than others.

Fish use body language to comunicate rather than speak, it's body language indicates as follows, such as a flinch when a larger fish comes towards it from the fish nipping another, and there's fish knowing there place by moving out of the way when larger fish come to feed.

thats how fish comunicate, i think it would be false to ask if fish can talk because IMO the answer would be NO.

Lol, don't get me wrong....I know fish can't physically talk like people can. I might not be very smart, but I'm not that dumb either. I was just demonstating that creatures such as dogs have a way they communicate to each other by vociliazations and body langauge and that I'm sure other animal species can communitcate in different ways too. Humans are obviouisly the only things with real speech, and you aren't going to go peer into your fish tank and see your fish barking or lip curling another fish.....hence the "animals can talk to each other in different languages" comment. Sorry if that first comment didn't come across very clearly.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Fish can definately commicate via body language and others forms of communication like eletric signals (like the elephant nose fish) with each other within their own species/type of fish, but when it comes to two completely different types of fish communicating, not all fish can do this. The way that fish commicate varies a great deal from species to species, but there isn't really one common language that all fish "speak". So i think the best example of a lot of types of fish all living in a community tank together would be like a room of people all speaking different languages. A guppy may not understand what the betta is trying to get across when the betta flares at it, just as much as a pleco may not understand what the neon tetras are feeling when they all shoal tightly together in a defensive formation.

Some fishes commicative skills are definately a lot more developed/evolved than others- i think what decides this factor mostly comes down to the socialability of the fish in question- like apes, the larger and more sociably complex the group the animals lives in, the bigger its brain needs to be. So fish that live primarily solitary lives in the wild are likely to not have as developed social/communicative skills as fish which live socially together and where pecking orders and things need to be established. You need a big brain to keep on top of all these things- if you are stupid, its more difficult to keep track of things like who's mating with who, who's fighting with who, who's working their way to the top of the pecking order and who's falling down the social ladder, who's just got pregnant or given birth, who's just sexually matured and which fish they are interested in etc etc.
It makes sense in evolution for fish to take note of others body language in other area's of life too- as some of you may have noticed, sometimes when a particular type of fish is very sick, the sick fish goes off on its own and the other fish completely avoid it. If the other fish didn't notice the fish was sick via its body language and appearance, they may continue to swim with it and pick up whatever desease it has and end up falling very ill themselves.
Guppys in particular have had a lot of research done on them in these area's;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/4132017.stm

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3009170.stm

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/890477.stm

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/5060694.stm

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3913305.stm

Even small sociable tropical fish like guppys are actually quite intelligent and have very complex social networks and lives living with each other in their little aquariums. Even in my tanks, when i watch my guppys in particular i can sometimes see and keep a note of the little changes in their society which are always happening. I know the most popular and unpopular males with the females, the most docile and agressive ones, the most popular and fertiles females and the most dominant ones etc. I see similar things also going go with other fish like my danio's and WCMM's (white cloud mountain minnows), platys etc .

 

[Bignose]

There is a very interesting game theory description of communication that fish exhibit that I read about a while back. Consider a school of smaller fish that wants to know information about a larger fish. They would want to know, if the larger fish is a predator and then how aggressive or hungry it may be.

Following game theory, we consider every member of the smaller fish to be one of two groups, a brave group or a cowardly group. Well, if a fish were brave, it would swim right up to larger fish, and frankly, probably be eaten very quickly. All that remains are the cowards to pass on their cowardly genes, and make an entire population of cowards. But then, no information about predators could be passed back to the group, as no fish would leave the school to get information.

What does happen is that small fish approach larger fish is short bursts. That is, a group of smaller fish swim forward a few centimeters then wait. On the whole, each individual fish wants to hang back, that is the cowardliness is dominant, but the information potential is so great that each fish takes its share of the risk by going a short distance away from the main group.

In 1987, Milinski published a really neat paper confirming these observations. He used sticklebacks and two different kinds of mirrors. A straight reflecting mirror and a reversing mirror. When a lone stickleback was swimming next to a straight reflecting mirror, it saw its reflection in the mirror, and felt that it was not alone, so fish placed in front of the reflecting mirror swam pretty much right up to the larger fish knowing that other fish were also taking on a share of the risk. On the flip side, when a fish swam past the reversing mirror, it saw its reflection swimming backward, so fish placed in front of the reversing mirror almost never took on all the risk on itself. In game theory, this is called a tit-for-tat strategy, or in other words, "I know you took some risk, so now I will take my share of the risk".

I think that many different kinds of animals display this behavior. Another rather famous game theory example are vampire bats. Vampire bats' metabolism runs so quickly and they are such a small animal, that if a vampire bat does not get food for three staight days it will die. Consequently, they have developed a system where if one bat comes back to the roost very well fed, it will regurgiate some of its food to help the other bats that were unsuccessful at finding food. The bats learned which members would share and which were greedy. Over time, it was observed that a bat that had shared in the past was much more likely to be shared with in the future, and a bat that was greedy was almost never allowed to share if it came back hungry. Again, tit-for-tat. "you shared in the past, so I'll share with you now".

While this may not be the direct communication the OP was talking about, it certainly describes some very sophisticated communications occuring by fish, and how the dynamics of a population plays itself out.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Very interesting Bignose - i think that these theories certainly apply to some types of fish, but probably not all types of fish (fish are such a diverse group, its difficult to say anything that applies to all types of fish).
When i used to have a really massive shoal of neon tetras (around 24+), i did notice that they were an aweful lot more confident when going about various activities in the tank (like moving the group from one end to the other, or exploring more densley planted area's of the tank, or simply being more confident at feeding times etc). But as the group deminished(sp?) in size down to a shoal of aroudn 12+, they become a lot more cautious and less condfident and preferred to stay in one particular end of the tank rather than explore it, and tended not to rise up to the food to eat it but rather waited for it t come in their direction in the tank etc.
I think the larger and better decorated the aquarium though, the more natural behaviour and also commication between the fish you are likely to see simply because they have more space to express themselves and do things etc. There are definately other factors as well like the stocking you have in the tank and what you feed the fish as well etc. I enjoy seeing my fish exhibit natural and normal behavior, and i try to create habitats in my tanks which reflect their natural habitats better as think the fish appreciate this.

EDIT: Idefinately believe that certian types of fish have the ability to observe other types of fish for their own bennefet. For example, when i was teaching my fish to feed from my hand, the guppys were the first fish to take food from my hand but the danio's didn't for a long time. But after the danio's had observed the guppys feeding from my hand after numerous occasions and eventually realised that a. The hand offered lots of good food, and b. It was safe to feed from my hand, and c. The guppys were getting loads of good food from feeding directly from my hand, they eventually started to feed from my hand too.

 

[x-fish]

fish can communicate in bubble language lmao!