Debate topic : do fish have emotions?

[GaryE]

Let's take this a step further..
Do bugs have emotions?
As a beekeek..I know when my bees are happy.. they tell me.. both in sound and behavior.
Also know when my bees are angry and pissed off. Again they tell me..along with stinging my butt.
Is this emotions or instinct behavior?

Again, what are emotions? If we don't know that, how can we know if other species have them?

If they are biochemical reactions (and they seem to be) then who is to say when or how many times they evolved?

And then, do we talk about "our emotions" or theirs?

It's a wild question I wish I could live long enough to see sorted out. The research is getting very interesting. I need to have a talk with the very smart crow that's been training me to feed her out back.

 

[jaylach]

Let's take this a step further..
Do bugs have emotions?
As a beekeek..I know when my bees are happy.. they tell me.. both in sound and behavior.
Also know when my bees are angry and pissed off. Again they tell me..along with stinging my butt.
Is this emotions or instinct behavior?

Bees also communicate with each other...

We as humans tend to rate intelligence and emotion by what we experience and we don't even understand either within ourselves. Do humans have the highest level of intelligence on the planet? Probably, but I wouldn't rule out some aquatic mammals. Just because other creatures do not have as high of a level or type of intelligence as humans does not mean that they have no intelligence. The same goes for emotions in my meager thinking.

I think the bigger factor is self awareness which many animals beside humans do seem to have. Without self awareness I would call it instinct but that does not mean that instinctual behavior cannot be a form of emotion. An antelope runs from a lion through instinctualy being aware that the lion is danger. Could that not be called fear?

 

[woyzeck]

Portuguese scientists reported fish do show a neurological and physicalogical reaction to the environment around them. They must have some level of emotion but one that does not go much beyond instinctive stimuli as opposed to a cognitive and a consciousness thought process. Being so reliant on simple change in Chemistry, they dont have the means to adapt and modify which I feel is essential to developing a sense of self awareness.

 

[itiwhetu]

Bees also communicate with each other...

We as humans tend to rate intelligence and emotion by what we experience and we don't even understand either within ourselves. Do humans have the highest level of intelligence on the planet? Probably, but I wouldn't rule out some aquatic mammals. Just because other creatures do not have as high of a level or type of intelligence as humans does not mean that they have no intelligence. The same goes for emotions in my meager thinking.

I think the bigger factor is self awareness which many animals beside humans do seem to have. Without self awareness I would call it instinct but that does not mean that instinctual behavior cannot be a form of emotion. An antelope runs from a lion through instinctualy being aware that the lion is danger. Could that not be called fear?

How clever are ants? Now they have figured out how to run a society perfectly, and none of them carry guns.

 

[woyzeck]

Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
My wife and I used to do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

 

[Lemon]

Ohhhhhhh my opinionated but bouta start a fightttt
Fish act on instinct
Instincts are not emotional
Instincts are the act on what has been proven to keep your species/family/you alive. Fish will act “happy” Because they see you as a source of food, do you know that when they do this they are seen as “cute” and they will get food. You are nothing to them except for the provider of their food meals stress confinement and slow torture. The fish that you currently have in your tanks are dying, all fish and all living beings are dying that is what age is. You are confining this fish or the fish that you own to this area they know nothing else, they only know that you are the source of their food that is the only reason they react to you in anyway. People used to say that elephants reacted neurologically when they saw someone they knew the same way a person does when they see a puppy . This is not true has never been proven to be true and it was never an actual fact I believe it is the same way with fish. Because we cannot get a fish a CT scan to see his brain activity. Compare the size of our minds or any other animal that can feel proven emotion or connection to other beings of its species or outside of its species. It is a small small small small minded fish. And I’m just gonna go right down and say it your fish and all fish are dumb. Your fish is relative Git themselves caught and then they were bred over and over to result in your fish. Or fish was just stupid and got snatched right from its home. Your fish can never and will never feel emotion or connection to you period
And I adore my fish but I will never say she has emotions. If I offended you then do your own research

 

[GaryE]

Ohhhhhhh my opinionated but bouta start a fightttt
Fish act on instinct
Instincts are not emotional
And I adore my fish but I will never say she has emotions. If I offended you then do your own research

Not being a fish, I'm not offended!

But what if emotions are instincts, even in humans? We aren't special, and there's no reason other species might not have the same instinctive responses. It all depends on what emotions are.

It really is a complex question, because there has been research using CT scans and larger animals, and the results are interesting. For fish, there's proof of problem solving and intelligence (now, what is intelligence... here we go again). There's no reason a fish would give a drop of mulm for any of us, and emotions in fish related to humans are a pleasant dream. What they feel about the world will take us a long time to understand, if ever. We can't do it now, for sure. But we also can't categorically deny the possibility, as unlikely as it may seem... That research is ongoing.

 

[SomethingsFishy24]

Ohhhhhhh my opinionated but bouta start a fightttt
Fish act on instinct
Instincts are not emotional
Instincts are the act on what has been proven to keep your species/family/you alive. Fish will act “happy” Because they see you as a source of food, do you know that when they do this they are seen as “cute” and they will get food. You are nothing to them except for the provider of their food meals stress confinement and slow torture. The fish that you currently have in your tanks are dying, all fish and all living beings are dying that is what age is. You are confining this fish or the fish that you own to this area they know nothing else, they only know that you are the source of their food that is the only reason they react to you in anyway. People used to say that elephants reacted neurologically when they saw someone they knew the same way a person does when they see a puppy . This is not true has never been proven to be true and it was never an actual fact I believe it is the same way with fish. Because we cannot get a fish a CT scan to see his brain activity. Compare the size of our minds or any other animal that can feel proven emotion or connection to other beings of its species or outside of its species. It is a small small small small minded fish. And I’m just gonna go right down and say it your fish and all fish are dumb. Your fish is relative Git themselves caught and then they were bred over and over to result in your fish. Or fish was just stupid and got snatched right from its home. Your fish can never and will never feel emotion or connection to you period
And I adore my fish but I will never say she has emotions. If I offended you then do your own research

I believe you are incorrect in the fact that connections cannot be made between fish and people. As I see it, my fish must have a depth of trust in me, beyond a food source as I can net them with ease. There is no thrashing or chasing or fighting. When I present the net to the one I want, it swims on in with no fuss (sometimes others swim in too, like where are we going to go?) Many fish in my care are quite old. Not a couple years old, but several years to a decade old. They are not stressed as they move gracefully through their tank. I know this by their color, their activity, the way they interact with their tank mates, their environment and with myself. They recognize my family members. My father in law does not live with me but he comes to visit as well as tank care of the fish while we are away. They see him and they immediately begin to wiggle and glass surf until he comes closer. They recognize him. They also recognize and respond differently to each of my sons. Beaker, my Blood parrot absolutely adores the attention of my 21 month old. He follows him around the tank and when my toddler has his face close to the glass, Beaker is right there, looking him in the eyes. My toddler doesn't feed the fish, he is an observer, but they have bonded. It happens all day, every day, as soon as Beaker sees his buddy, he is there following my son's every move. I can list hundreds of similar interactions between my family members and fish, heck, even other household pets and the fish.

It is a bit unfair to call fish stupid because they were caught in the wild, many fish caught in the wild are "easily" caught because humans employ nefarious means to catch them. I mean if you are going to drug a whole section of river or stun the fish, it is not the fault of the fish it was caught. Humans if stunned/drugged could be just as easily taken.

Humans are animals after all, we have a terrible habit of believing we are bigger and better than everything else. I will not see my animals in any other light than what they show of themselves to me. My goal is to give the best life to all my pets. I believe they show their love in their own unique way. My bonds with my fish, cats, dogs are all strong and I am very attune to how they are feeling. They aren't just " Cats, Dogs, Fish" they are living just as we are, and have their own feelings. Maybe not a capacity for critical/logical thinking (I often question humans capability of this at times, too) but certainly capable of basic emotion.

 

[Lemon]

I do believe they have basic or simple emotions and can bond especially if they are group animals. However I am not talking about specific fish under specific conditions
I’m talking about in general. For example if we had 1000 fish in 3 gallon tanks each and they where all fed the same thing by the same person for a year they will all commonly react the same. They may bond slightly but once a different person starts feeding them they will switch off real quick to the food giver. I’m speaking statistically not personally and even then it’s hard to do that math properly because I do not have 1000 three gallon tanks for fish so I dish out the estimates to evaluate the statistical term of which the fish would react so I am unable to take much consideration to the individual reactions

 

[SomethingsFishy24]

I do believe they have basic or simple emotions and can bond especially if they are group animals. However I am not talking about specific fish under specific conditions
I’m talking about in general. For example if we had 1000 fish in 3 gallon tanks each and they where all fed the same thing by the same person for a year they will all commonly react the same. They may bond slightly but once a different person starts feeding them they will switch off real quick to the food giver. I’m speaking statistically not personally and even then it’s hard to do that math properly because I do not have 1000 three gallon tanks for fish so I dish out the estimates to evaluate the statistical term of which the fish would react so I am unable to take much consideration to the individual reactions

In such context the environment in which the hypothetical fish are in is quite cold/clinical. I would expect them to behave in such a manner. If all I did was provide food and shelter, no enrichment or interaction, I would suspect my own animals would act such as this. There is something in that bond that is made that makes the difference. It enriches both lives. This scenario reminds me of the orphans of Romania. There were so many babies to care for that the staff could not meet their emotional needs. They provided food, a bed and cleanliness but nothing else. The babies no longer cried, why, because they grew accustom to being ignored emotionally. They shut down. They were not sung to, not played with, they lacked all forms of enrichment and bonding. They grew and of course had trouble connecting with anyone or forming any bonds. No fault their own but a failure of their caretakers.

Wild fish, sure, they don't give two flips about people. Fish that are kept as pets, are going to align more with the human/animal bond than a clinical study by someone who simply provides food/shelter/cleanliness.

I think it is "you get what you put in", if the time is taken and the effort to enrich a life is made, it will pay it forward ten fold. The dog on the tie out will hang its head and be depressed all the while it is ignored. However, someone comes into its life and treats it like a living being apposed to a lawn ornament, that dog will come to life and show you who it truly is.

That's my perspective on the matter, for what it is worth.

 

[itiwhetu]

If you don't think fish have emotions, then why do you keep them? Why would you have a pet that gives nothing back? It is their emotions and the way they interact that makes them the adoring pets that we love.

 

[AmyKieran]

If you don't think fish have emotions, then why do you keep them? Why would you have a pet that gives nothing back? It is their emotions and the way they interact that makes them the adoring pets that we love.

I asked my wife this exact thing.

I am in the ‘fish do have emotions’
And she isn’t..

She says that they don’t have emotions but she keeps them because she likes the Color’s and aesthetic of the fish

 

[jaylach]

I'll go back to something I posted much earlier in this topic...

I had a VERY sick pleco that I'm happy to say that is now totally fine. At that time I had just two black skirt tetras, now have six so they can school.

The point is that when the pleco was sick there were only two tetras. Both tetras were in the same tank and presented with the same situations and environment. This would point to both behaving the same in relation to the sick pleco as they both had exactly the same stimulus but that was not what happened. If it is only instinct that drives these critters the result should have been the same between both tetras but was not. One tetra kept trying to attack the sick pleco but the other kept driving it off protecting the sick fish. For three or four days the protective tetra never left the pleco's side.

Was the protective tetra showing emotion? I don't know. But I DO feel if there is nothing but instinct both tetras should have reacted the same but that was not the case. The protective tetra still interacts more with the pleco than with the other tetras. It is really like they have become friends in a primitive way. While I can't prove it I truly believe that they like each other.

While I have no way to prove is it not, at least a little bit possible, that what I have described puts forth at least the remote possibility that these fish showed emotion? I mean this one tetra swims with the 'school' at times but mostly still stays with the pleco. To me this shows attachment. Especially between different species how can you have attachment without some form of emotion?

 

[woyzeck]

If you don't think fish have emotions, then why do you keep them? Why would you have a pet that gives nothing back? It is their emotions and the way they interact that makes them the adoring pets that we love.

Because the dumber they are - the cuter they are. If fish had emotions they'd hide as soon as you looked at them; possibly commit suicide at the hopeless of their situation. Listening to a Podcast the other morning - fish are so instinctive to their environment, fish caught in the wild (as opposed to those breed in a fish farm) often wont eat and eventually die of hunger.

 

[itiwhetu]

Because the dumber they are - the cuter they are. If fish had emotions they'd hide as soon as you looked at them; possibly commit suicide at the hopeless of their situation. Listening to a Podcast the other morning - fish are so instinctive to their environment, fish caught in the wild (as opposed to those breed in a fish farm) often wont eat and eventually die of hunger.

That's not good for all the aquarists that like wild caught fish