Fish Are Not Insentient Dullards

Fish Are Not Insentient Dullards

By Ben Goldfarb

Source: nautil

4/26/2023

Credit: Grigorev Mikhail / Shutterstock

The lives of most captive fish are at once boring and bizarre. A zebrafish in a genomics laboratory or an Atlantic salmon in a fish farm generally endures conditions that would be utterly alien to their wild counterparts. The light is blinding, the walls smooth glass or concrete, the floor ungilded by so much as a plant. Even the water lacks the chemical complexity of a river or sea. It’s both a profoundly unnatural existence and, likely, a dull one.

Until recently, those conditions didn’t overly bother too many people. Compared to primates and other lab mammals, fish were perceived as insentient dullards who didn’t require stimulus; as a result, many researchers believed that the logistical challenges of enriching their subjects’ lives outweighed the benefits. But those ways of thinking are being replaced by an appreciation for fishes’ social and cognitive complexity, which raises the question: How do barren environments affect the lives of captive fish? And what might richer ones do for them?

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News Id		Source	Stamp	country
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3517	How Scientists Are Bringing Back Sturgeons, Fish That Once Swam With Dinosaurs	discovermagazine	2021-07-23	CA
3518	Montana’s Famed Trout Under Threat as Drought Intensifies	dnyuz	2021-07-23	US
3519	Climate crisis threatens access to nutrients in fish, study finds	theguardian	2021-07-20	UK
3520	Britain's rarest freshwater fish flourishing in southern Scotland	itv	2016-10-21	UK
3521	Dam Operator Accused of Killing Thousands of Fish in Maine	mainepublic	2016-10-19	US
3522	Danish anglers enlisted to catch rainbow trout accidentally released from fish farm	abc	2016-10-12	DM
3523	Up to 80,000 Trout Escape After Cargo Ship Crashes Into Fish Farm in Denmark	gcaptain	2016-10-11	DM
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3525	Angler catches fish with drone on first attempt in brilliant footage showing technology's place in sport	mirror	2016-10-07	UK

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