14 ms·

Evidence that fish have feelings

108 points by JohnHammersley 11y ago

ars 11y ago
The article does not support the HN title.
- ridgeguy 11y ago
  I think it does. The study authors present evidence that fish, as measured by a stress hyperthermia response, respond in a manner consistent with an emotional response. As a recanted neurobiologist, I find that surprising and I'm willing to go along with the headline. It would be even more surprising (to me, at least) to find that something as fundamental as emotional response were not to be found in more primitive branches of the phylogenetic tree.
  - lisper 11y ago
    I don't buy it. If I attach a switch to an incandescent light bulb, then the bulb will get hot if I press the switch. If I press the switch enough, the light bulb will burn out. But it would not be accurate to say that the light bulb "died of stress" or that this was evidence that the light bulb could "feel" anything. It certainly doesn't prove the light bulb is conscious.
    - ivanca 11y ago
      Humans try so hard to believe consciousnesse is boolean, like "humans have it" and "every other living thing does not" is almost funny. I have news for nerds,, conciseness is a float, imprecition and all. So cannibalism and eating dolphins is way more closer than the average human is comfortable with, so people like to err on the lest uncomfortable side.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        While true that doesn't progress the discussion. The question is whether this evidence suggests the floating point number assigned to fish should be higher. That a lightbulb at ~0.0 consciousness could perform similarly is a good reason to give little weight to this study. What's the counterargument?
      - proc0 11y ago
        Is there no C line in the animal kingdom? If so we're saying spiders and cockroaches are conscious? Surely there's a distinction, and nobody really doubts elephants, dolphins and great apes, but we can clearly see the difference in quality of C. So if there is some kind of line or distinction within the animal kingdom, where would it be? Are insects the end of mechanical behavior? Or could that line extend to small fish and crustaceans? I think the article is using the word "feeling" a little too freely here. By the same measure, There could be an experiment suggesting cockroaches get stressed, and if so, would we be so quick to say they have feelings?
        marcoperaza 11y ago
        The problem is that consciousness is such a loaded concept. It can mean higher-order thought, self-awareness, ability to feel emotions, the phenomenon of subjective experience itself, and more. I find that most conversations about it involve lots of talking past each other.
  - ars 11y ago
    They have not demonstrated that stress hyperthermia = feelings. Just that stress = hyperthermia in a fish. It's a result, but it's not the result in the HN title. Which is not in the article BTW.
    - marcusgarvey 11y ago
      But according to the article stress hyperthemia is one trait used to identify consciousness. Is consciousness the same as "having feelings"? >One particular trait used to identify consciousness, which was previously thought to be absent in fish, is the capacity for stress-induced hyperthermia or “emotional fever”. This is a physical reaction similar to a fever caused by infection, but in this case the trigger is a stressful situation. Basically, the body gets warmer in response to stress.
      - ars 11y ago
        I googled stress-induced hyperthermia and got very little. That would imply that if it's a marker for consciousness it's not a well accepted one. Maybe it's one marker among many, but certainly not enough to support the HN title "Fish have feeling". And simply on a logical level I'm not seeing the connection between stress causing heat, and consciousness. Animals obviously can get stressed, and animals obviously can have a fever. I'm not seeing why consciousness is necessary to link the two.
        trentlott 11y ago
        Do it using scholar.google.com and you will get quite a bit of primary research regarding it.
        ars 11y ago
        I did. I found lots of research, very little of it having anything to do with consciousness (or the lack thereof).
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Actually, it does. Unless you mean that it isn't surprising that there is evidence that fish have feelings.
  - ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
    There is no evidence that fish have feelings. There is evidence that fish increases its temperature in response to stress.
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      Which is, in the literature about animals and feelings, considered evidence that an animal may have feelings. Did we read the same article? It says quite plainly that this response is considered evidence of feelings in animals, and the supposed lack of this response in fish was evidence that fish did not have feelings. So, if the lack of response (in previous measurements) was considered evidence against fish having feelings, why would this better experiment, which did observe the response in fish, not be considered evidence of fish having feelings?
      - ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
        Because "feelings" is undefined. If the only evidence of having/not having "feelings" in fish is the increase of temperature, why not simply talk about the increase of temperature, without inventing "feelings"? Not inventing non-material objects unless something is impossible to explain without them is the basis of science, it is called Occam's razor. My server also increases temperature under high load. Should I conjecture that it has feelings?
        SwellJoe 11y ago
        It is one of many aspects of the fish mind mentioned in the article; things like developing memories, comparing oneself to other fish, exhibiting preferences, etc. Each of them alone may not be enough to argue "fish have feelings" or "fish can think" or "fish are sentient beings", but they are evidence of those things. They don't make it so, but they hint at something that it is hard to figure out without a number of data points. Occam's razor can just as easily be applied here to come to a conclusion that is opposite your conclusion. Fish do things that mammals (humans) do. We know that mammals do those things (stress fever) because they are experiencing things in a way at least somewhat comparable to the way we experience them (they are experiencing discomfort and fear and their body is responding to it, just as ours do). What is the simpler explanation here? 1. Your conjecture that fish are utterly and completely different from other living things that exhibit this response and that they are exhibiting this response for reasons unlike our reasons (i.e. they aren't experiencing discomfort and fear, but are still heating up like we do). 2. They're more like other sentient beings than we'd previously assumed, and are experiencing things in some ways similarly. In short: If you're coming at this with the strongly held belief that fish are impossibly different from humans and can't possibly have feelings, you would interpret your way. But, if you're coming at it with no strongly held beliefs on the subject, and you see a fish behave in ways that indicate they are sentient and experience suffering like other animals...well, you assume the responses and behaviors are because they are kinda like those other animals. Your assumption (that this response has no relation to the similar response in mammals) requires a new explanation for why the response happens. Thus, it seems to not be the simplest explanation (to me).
- JohnHammersley 11y ago
  The HN title is the one the BBC had used in linking to the article from their homepage; it made sense to me and so I went with it for the HN post (I didn't actually notice until afterwards that the title in the article itself was different). Hope that helps clear up the reasoning behind it.
throwaway60453 11y ago
I would not be surprised if fish have feelings or even emotions. The link is worth reading. Despite being short, it summarizes several reasons why non-humans are likely more similar than not to humans that have been developed in the past 2 decades, with no published counter-examples.
wantreprenr007 11y ago
I almost felt guilty for taking fish oil and eating sushi, but then it's clear that a fever reflex doesn't equate to missing Jane the cute fish next door, writing Leaves of Kelp or being jealous of Henry's dorsal fins, although I must admit they are quite impressive. It might seem anthropocentric (it's definitely anthropomorphic), but Jane was really tasty with soy sauce and wasabi.
- wrong_variable 11y ago
  There is nothing I can do about sushi. But you can buy manufactured Omega 3 and 6 from plants. I alternate between them to minimize the damage I am doing to the planet.
  - wantreprenr007 11y ago
    I was kidding. Of course I eat walnuts, pecans and other low-water tree nuts; fish, not so much.
- alexashka 11y ago
  Don't feel bad - fish eat other fish. We eat animals, animals eat us. Circle of life.
  - trentmb 11y ago
    If we were strictly hunter-gatherer, sure. As far as I know, humans have a monopoly on the industrialzation of livestock production.
    - noonespecial 11y ago
      Ants farm aphids. Even use chemicals to do it. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.h...
      - trentmb 11y ago
cscurmudgeon 11y ago
It is easy to accept popular sensational science if I turn off my brain and any critical thinking.
- SalmoShalazar 11y ago
  What exactly do you take issue with in the article?
  - ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
    Just read the abstract of the article [1]: "It has been suggested that the capacity for emotional fever evolved only in amniotes (mammals, birds and reptiles), in association with the evolution of consciousness in these groups. According to this view, lack of emotional fever in fishes reflects a lack of consciousness." The article is about "emotional fever", defined as "a transient rise in body temperature shown in response to a variety of stressors". Article shows that fish can show this behaviour. On the other hand, the "lack of consciousness" or its existence, is not proven. It is just a hypothesis, based on some "view", expressed in [2]. [1] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/20152266 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/2015... [2] http://dx.doi.org/10.2170/jjphysiol.49.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.2170/jjphysiol.49.1
  - cscurmudgeon 11y ago
    Read the article. Compare with the title. Does it support the title?
sharp11 11y ago
If you're interested in this topic, I heartily recommend Carl Safina's Beyond Words. It presents compelling evidence for the thesis that the default in the animal kingdom is conscious & feeling.
- proc0 11y ago
  Just took a glance at this, and it doesn't seem the book suggests that the whole of the animal kingdom has consciousness, right? Could we attribute this to a spider or a scorpion? Of course this depends on the definition of C, but we can agree there's a "higher" form of consciousness, which the book is mostly exemplifying by using elephants and wolves. These larger creatures seem obvious, but serve no evidence to whether or not the simpler lifeforms like insects, and even small fish have anything more than basic instincts.
  - sporkenfang 11y ago
    I have a betta. It's pretty easy to tell when he's feeling something; if you've ever had or seen one, you know they're pretty expressive little guys. Granted, he mostly seems to be anticipating being fed (or the possibility of lady bettas wandering by the nests of bubbles he builds), or getting pissed off (which he displays by war-dancing -- just youtube it) at the snail living in his tank, but he's fully capable of interacting with humans at the level of most other sorts of pets. I'm not anthropomorphizing. If he could breathe air, he'd be doing his very best macho impersonation of a tomcat (or small yippy dog that thinks it's approximately the size of a great dane). If we go one step up and think about the average high schooler, I still am having trouble differentiating what (the high schooler) he or she might feel from what the betta might -- hunger, sexual frustration, happiness, annoyance, loneliness... the betta probably can't do trigonometry, doesn't have opposable thumbs, and has a different set of instincts tailored to his environment. We've simply evolved to do different things; that doesn't mean humans cannot observe emotions analogous to our own in other creatures. Spider-wise, I've never observed one for periods of time long enough to do much more than remove it from my house, but who knows.
  - sharp11 11y ago
    The book is architected around three exceptionally rich (and well-studied) examples: wolves, elephants, and dolphins (esp., killer whales). But he spends a great deal of time on other species (birds, fish, and yes, insects) and you would be missing the point of the book to think he's only talking about "higher" species. Read the book -- it really is mind-altering.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
Of course they do, our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him. Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him I don't think that really supports the theory of fish having feelings. I'm not sure it requires feelings to respond to repeated stimuli in a way to generates a more advantageous outcome. That's not to say fish don't have feelings, just that I'm not sure this is necessarily good evidence. > Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality That seems more likely to be indicative of feelings/consciousness in my eyes. Personality, specifically different personalities in the same type of organism, would indicate to me complex learned behavior (what else is personality but that?).
  - _yosefk 11y ago
    How can one support the theory of people having feelings, except for assuming that people feel more or less what you feel yourself? Unless you can experience others' feelings yourself somehow, you can always call everyone else's behavior "responses to repeated stimuli in a way that generates a more advantageous outcome." Personality is no different (so different fish, or people, have a different strategy of generating advantageous outcomes - learned or innate, it indicates some degree of complexity, but not "feelings.") The whole subject of "feelings" is kinda thorny as long as you either subscribe to a worldview where there's no real difference between inanimate and living objects (it's all just a bunch of atoms, it just so happens that some bunches move and some are stationary), or, alternatively, if you do believe in such a difference but have nothing but a gut feeling to rely on when defining the limit between "machines" and "feeling beings." Which means it's a thorny issue for, well, most of us.
    - jxdjsks 11y ago
      There is a third option, its all just matter, but matter is inherently conscious. I subscribe to this view.
ekianjo 11y ago
> We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those with a voice. From Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
iconjack 11y ago
Define "feelings".
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  The whole article is about undefined "consciousness". As the article itself says, it is "loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions". I wonder why HN would discuss "mind", "consciousness", "being an observer", etc. All these terms are no different from religious "soul", philosophical "qualia", they are equally undefined. At this point of progress in AI and computing I would expect hackers to study how intelligence invents these terms [2], not falling for this mistake themselves. It was suggested that AI would become "confused and as stubborn as are men in their convictions about mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like" at the beginning of AI development [3]. I would be more interested in study of how AI or more intelligent animals, such as monkeys, develop religion and "mind"-like terms. The article itself [4] is about stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH). It proves that fish increases temperature and moves to more warm water in response to stress. It is not too interesting for HN. Instead, synonym "emotional fever" is used for SIH and the conclusion is made that fish is capable of emotion and everyone happily discusses meaningless "emotions", "consciousness" and the like. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religio... [3] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/doyle/gallery/minsky/mmm.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/doyle/gallery/minsk... [4] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/20152266 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/2015...
autoreleasepool 11y ago
Looks like Kurt Cobain was wrong about that one. See: "Something in the Way" - Nirvana
- tribby 11y ago
  Would have been his birthday when this was published, no less.
kriro 11y ago
This is interesting. A good counterarguments against one of the most inconsistent diets I know of. Vegetarians that reject meat but do eat fish. Edit: I guess only stress == hyperthermia but it's still a step in the general direction.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  Vegetarians that accept the lifetime of torture and misery of milk production but base their diet choices on a life with one bad moment of a death. I've never understood that.
  - mrfusion 11y ago
    Eggs too.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      All factory animals really. Even bees. The work of Joel Salatin really challenged my veganity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin
- pherq 11y ago
  Speaking as one, I don't avoid meat because I oppose in all cases the killing of animals for human consumption. I'm a pescetarian because I think the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, both in emissions and in land and water use, is unnecessarily large. Similarly, I try to mostly avoid milk for the most part, which a lot of vegetarians who wouldn't touch fish don't seem to have any objection to...
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    I gave up fish before I gave up meat for reasons of sustainability (there are only so many fish in the sea).
redtuesday 11y ago
Maybe I'm too empathic, but I would always assume animals have feelings, feel pain etc. and try to prove otherwise. Not the other way around.
- azeirah 11y ago
  Perhaps, but do plants? Bacteria? Insects? Where do you draw the line? Is there a line?
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    > Is there a line? There's good reason to believe that there isn't. Which means it's ultimately a political question and will always have an arbitrary answer.
    - hodwik 11y ago
      What is that good reason, pray tell?
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        These things evolved, piece by piece, over millions of years.
        hodwik 11y ago
        As did quadrupeds and bipeds, but if asked to draw a line about their locomotion that is quite easy to do. Have not seen a convincing argument that we will not find an evolutionary line in the sand between sentient and automaton animals.
        vinceguidry 11y ago
        If you look at both quadrupeds and bipeds, you'll see around the time they evolved an interrim period in which creatures existed that were not really quadrupeds or bipeds. Evolutionary success creates only the illusion of lines, none really exist.
doctorstupid 11y ago
Exhibiting a basic survival instinct in a situation of simulated danger is weak evidence for emotion.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  Exactly. I think authors understand this too. The problem is that they want to make their article popular and get more citations, that is why they add this BS about consciousness to their article. What is sad is that most comments on HN are about "feelings" that their pet fish has and how fscking happy they are when fed.
hellofunk 11y ago
How is this a surprise? The world learned this years ago with Finding Nemo.
dwd 11y ago
For anyone interested, an article on studies into fish intelligence: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5958871/fish-intelligence-smart-research-behavior-pain http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5958871/fish-intelligence-smart-... Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131772
stevenjgarner 11y ago
I feel wet

108 points by JohnHammersley 11y ago

ars 11y ago

The article does not support the HN title.

ridgeguy 11y ago
I think it does. The study authors present evidence that fish, as measured by a stress hyperthermia response, respond in a manner consistent with an emotional response. As a recanted neurobiologist, I find that surprising and I'm willing to go along with the headline. It would be even more surprising (to me, at least) to find that something as fundamental as emotional response were not to be found in more primitive branches of the phylogenetic tree.
- lisper 11y ago
  I don't buy it. If I attach a switch to an incandescent light bulb, then the bulb will get hot if I press the switch. If I press the switch enough, the light bulb will burn out. But it would not be accurate to say that the light bulb "died of stress" or that this was evidence that the light bulb could "feel" anything. It certainly doesn't prove the light bulb is conscious.
  - ivanca 11y ago
    Humans try so hard to believe consciousnesse is boolean, like "humans have it" and "every other living thing does not" is almost funny. I have news for nerds,, conciseness is a float, imprecition and all. So cannibalism and eating dolphins is way more closer than the average human is comfortable with, so people like to err on the lest uncomfortable side.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      While true that doesn't progress the discussion. The question is whether this evidence suggests the floating point number assigned to fish should be higher. That a lightbulb at ~0.0 consciousness could perform similarly is a good reason to give little weight to this study. What's the counterargument?
    - proc0 11y ago
      Is there no C line in the animal kingdom? If so we're saying spiders and cockroaches are conscious? Surely there's a distinction, and nobody really doubts elephants, dolphins and great apes, but we can clearly see the difference in quality of C. So if there is some kind of line or distinction within the animal kingdom, where would it be? Are insects the end of mechanical behavior? Or could that line extend to small fish and crustaceans? I think the article is using the word "feeling" a little too freely here. By the same measure, There could be an experiment suggesting cockroaches get stressed, and if so, would we be so quick to say they have feelings?
      - marcoperaza 11y ago
        The problem is that consciousness is such a loaded concept. It can mean higher-order thought, self-awareness, ability to feel emotions, the phenomenon of subjective experience itself, and more. I find that most conversations about it involve lots of talking past each other.
- ars 11y ago
  They have not demonstrated that stress hyperthermia = feelings. Just that stress = hyperthermia in a fish. It's a result, but it's not the result in the HN title. Which is not in the article BTW.
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    But according to the article stress hyperthemia is one trait used to identify consciousness. Is consciousness the same as "having feelings"? >One particular trait used to identify consciousness, which was previously thought to be absent in fish, is the capacity for stress-induced hyperthermia or “emotional fever”. This is a physical reaction similar to a fever caused by infection, but in this case the trigger is a stressful situation. Basically, the body gets warmer in response to stress.
    - ars 11y ago
      I googled stress-induced hyperthermia and got very little. That would imply that if it's a marker for consciousness it's not a well accepted one. Maybe it's one marker among many, but certainly not enough to support the HN title "Fish have feeling". And simply on a logical level I'm not seeing the connection between stress causing heat, and consciousness. Animals obviously can get stressed, and animals obviously can have a fever. I'm not seeing why consciousness is necessary to link the two.
      - trentlott 11y ago
        Do it using scholar.google.com and you will get quite a bit of primary research regarding it.
        ars 11y ago
        I did. I found lots of research, very little of it having anything to do with consciousness (or the lack thereof).
SwellJoe 11y ago
Actually, it does. Unless you mean that it isn't surprising that there is evidence that fish have feelings.
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  There is no evidence that fish have feelings. There is evidence that fish increases its temperature in response to stress.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    Which is, in the literature about animals and feelings, considered evidence that an animal may have feelings. Did we read the same article? It says quite plainly that this response is considered evidence of feelings in animals, and the supposed lack of this response in fish was evidence that fish did not have feelings. So, if the lack of response (in previous measurements) was considered evidence against fish having feelings, why would this better experiment, which did observe the response in fish, not be considered evidence of fish having feelings?
    - ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
      Because "feelings" is undefined. If the only evidence of having/not having "feelings" in fish is the increase of temperature, why not simply talk about the increase of temperature, without inventing "feelings"? Not inventing non-material objects unless something is impossible to explain without them is the basis of science, it is called Occam's razor. My server also increases temperature under high load. Should I conjecture that it has feelings?
      - SwellJoe 11y ago
        It is one of many aspects of the fish mind mentioned in the article; things like developing memories, comparing oneself to other fish, exhibiting preferences, etc. Each of them alone may not be enough to argue "fish have feelings" or "fish can think" or "fish are sentient beings", but they are evidence of those things. They don't make it so, but they hint at something that it is hard to figure out without a number of data points. Occam's razor can just as easily be applied here to come to a conclusion that is opposite your conclusion. Fish do things that mammals (humans) do. We know that mammals do those things (stress fever) because they are experiencing things in a way at least somewhat comparable to the way we experience them (they are experiencing discomfort and fear and their body is responding to it, just as ours do). What is the simpler explanation here? 1. Your conjecture that fish are utterly and completely different from other living things that exhibit this response and that they are exhibiting this response for reasons unlike our reasons (i.e. they aren't experiencing discomfort and fear, but are still heating up like we do). 2. They're more like other sentient beings than we'd previously assumed, and are experiencing things in some ways similarly. In short: If you're coming at this with the strongly held belief that fish are impossibly different from humans and can't possibly have feelings, you would interpret your way. But, if you're coming at it with no strongly held beliefs on the subject, and you see a fish behave in ways that indicate they are sentient and experience suffering like other animals...well, you assume the responses and behaviors are because they are kinda like those other animals. Your assumption (that this response has no relation to the similar response in mammals) requires a new explanation for why the response happens. Thus, it seems to not be the simplest explanation (to me).
JohnHammersley 11y ago
The HN title is the one the BBC had used in linking to the article from their homepage; it made sense to me and so I went with it for the HN post (I didn't actually notice until afterwards that the title in the article itself was different). Hope that helps clear up the reasoning behind it.

throwaway60453 11y ago

I would not be surprised if fish have feelings or even emotions. The link is worth reading. Despite being short, it summarizes several reasons why non-humans are likely more similar than not to humans that have been developed in the past 2 decades, with no published counter-examples.

wantreprenr007 11y ago

I almost felt guilty for taking fish oil and eating sushi, but then it's clear that a fever reflex doesn't equate to missing Jane the cute fish next door, writing Leaves of Kelp or being jealous of Henry's dorsal fins, although I must admit they are quite impressive. It might seem anthropocentric (it's definitely anthropomorphic), but Jane was really tasty with soy sauce and wasabi.

wrong_variable 11y ago
There is nothing I can do about sushi. But you can buy manufactured Omega 3 and 6 from plants. I alternate between them to minimize the damage I am doing to the planet.
- wantreprenr007 11y ago
  I was kidding. Of course I eat walnuts, pecans and other low-water tree nuts; fish, not so much.
alexashka 11y ago
Don't feel bad - fish eat other fish. We eat animals, animals eat us. Circle of life.
- trentmb 11y ago
  If we were strictly hunter-gatherer, sure. As far as I know, humans have a monopoly on the industrialzation of livestock production.
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    Ants farm aphids. Even use chemicals to do it. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.h...
    - trentmb 11y ago

cscurmudgeon 11y ago

It is easy to accept popular sensational science if I turn off my brain and any critical thinking.

SalmoShalazar 11y ago
What exactly do you take issue with in the article?
- ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
  Just read the abstract of the article [1]: "It has been suggested that the capacity for emotional fever evolved only in amniotes (mammals, birds and reptiles), in association with the evolution of consciousness in these groups. According to this view, lack of emotional fever in fishes reflects a lack of consciousness." The article is about "emotional fever", defined as "a transient rise in body temperature shown in response to a variety of stressors". Article shows that fish can show this behaviour. On the other hand, the "lack of consciousness" or its existence, is not proven. It is just a hypothesis, based on some "view", expressed in [2]. [1] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/20152266 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/2015... [2] http://dx.doi.org/10.2170/jjphysiol.49.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.2170/jjphysiol.49.1
- cscurmudgeon 11y ago
  Read the article. Compare with the title. Does it support the title?

sharp11 11y ago

If you're interested in this topic, I heartily recommend Carl Safina's Beyond Words. It presents compelling evidence for the thesis that the default in the animal kingdom is conscious & feeling.

proc0 11y ago
Just took a glance at this, and it doesn't seem the book suggests that the whole of the animal kingdom has consciousness, right? Could we attribute this to a spider or a scorpion? Of course this depends on the definition of C, but we can agree there's a "higher" form of consciousness, which the book is mostly exemplifying by using elephants and wolves. These larger creatures seem obvious, but serve no evidence to whether or not the simpler lifeforms like insects, and even small fish have anything more than basic instincts.
- sporkenfang 11y ago
  I have a betta. It's pretty easy to tell when he's feeling something; if you've ever had or seen one, you know they're pretty expressive little guys. Granted, he mostly seems to be anticipating being fed (or the possibility of lady bettas wandering by the nests of bubbles he builds), or getting pissed off (which he displays by war-dancing -- just youtube it) at the snail living in his tank, but he's fully capable of interacting with humans at the level of most other sorts of pets. I'm not anthropomorphizing. If he could breathe air, he'd be doing his very best macho impersonation of a tomcat (or small yippy dog that thinks it's approximately the size of a great dane). If we go one step up and think about the average high schooler, I still am having trouble differentiating what (the high schooler) he or she might feel from what the betta might -- hunger, sexual frustration, happiness, annoyance, loneliness... the betta probably can't do trigonometry, doesn't have opposable thumbs, and has a different set of instincts tailored to his environment. We've simply evolved to do different things; that doesn't mean humans cannot observe emotions analogous to our own in other creatures. Spider-wise, I've never observed one for periods of time long enough to do much more than remove it from my house, but who knows.
- sharp11 11y ago
  The book is architected around three exceptionally rich (and well-studied) examples: wolves, elephants, and dolphins (esp., killer whales). But he spends a great deal of time on other species (birds, fish, and yes, insects) and you would be missing the point of the book to think he's only talking about "higher" species. Read the book -- it really is mind-altering.

mixmastamyk 11y ago

Of course they do, our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him. Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality.

kbenson 11y ago
> our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him I don't think that really supports the theory of fish having feelings. I'm not sure it requires feelings to respond to repeated stimuli in a way to generates a more advantageous outcome. That's not to say fish don't have feelings, just that I'm not sure this is necessarily good evidence. > Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality That seems more likely to be indicative of feelings/consciousness in my eyes. Personality, specifically different personalities in the same type of organism, would indicate to me complex learned behavior (what else is personality but that?).
- _yosefk 11y ago
  How can one support the theory of people having feelings, except for assuming that people feel more or less what you feel yourself? Unless you can experience others' feelings yourself somehow, you can always call everyone else's behavior "responses to repeated stimuli in a way that generates a more advantageous outcome." Personality is no different (so different fish, or people, have a different strategy of generating advantageous outcomes - learned or innate, it indicates some degree of complexity, but not "feelings.") The whole subject of "feelings" is kinda thorny as long as you either subscribe to a worldview where there's no real difference between inanimate and living objects (it's all just a bunch of atoms, it just so happens that some bunches move and some are stationary), or, alternatively, if you do believe in such a difference but have nothing but a gut feeling to rely on when defining the limit between "machines" and "feeling beings." Which means it's a thorny issue for, well, most of us.
  - jxdjsks 11y ago
    There is a third option, its all just matter, but matter is inherently conscious. I subscribe to this view.

ekianjo 11y ago

> We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those with a voice. From Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

iconjack 11y ago

Define "feelings".

ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
The whole article is about undefined "consciousness". As the article itself says, it is "loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions". I wonder why HN would discuss "mind", "consciousness", "being an observer", etc. All these terms are no different from religious "soul", philosophical "qualia", they are equally undefined. At this point of progress in AI and computing I would expect hackers to study how intelligence invents these terms [2], not falling for this mistake themselves. It was suggested that AI would become "confused and as stubborn as are men in their convictions about mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like" at the beginning of AI development [3]. I would be more interested in study of how AI or more intelligent animals, such as monkeys, develop religion and "mind"-like terms. The article itself [4] is about stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH). It proves that fish increases temperature and moves to more warm water in response to stress. It is not too interesting for HN. Instead, synonym "emotional fever" is used for SIH and the conclusion is made that fish is capable of emotion and everyone happily discusses meaningless "emotions", "consciousness" and the like. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religio... [3] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/doyle/gallery/minsky/mmm.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/doyle/gallery/minsk... [4] http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/20152266 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1819/2015...

autoreleasepool 11y ago

Looks like Kurt Cobain was wrong about that one. See: "Something in the Way" - Nirvana

tribby 11y ago
Would have been his birthday when this was published, no less.

kriro 11y ago

This is interesting. A good counterarguments against one of the most inconsistent diets I know of. Vegetarians that reject meat but do eat fish. Edit: I guess only stress == hyperthermia but it's still a step in the general direction.

SixSigma 11y ago
Vegetarians that accept the lifetime of torture and misery of milk production but base their diet choices on a life with one bad moment of a death. I've never understood that.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Eggs too.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    All factory animals really. Even bees. The work of Joel Salatin really challenged my veganity. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin
pherq 11y ago
Speaking as one, I don't avoid meat because I oppose in all cases the killing of animals for human consumption. I'm a pescetarian because I think the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, both in emissions and in land and water use, is unnecessarily large. Similarly, I try to mostly avoid milk for the most part, which a lot of vegetarians who wouldn't touch fish don't seem to have any objection to...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  I gave up fish before I gave up meat for reasons of sustainability (there are only so many fish in the sea).

redtuesday 11y ago

Maybe I'm too empathic, but I would always assume animals have feelings, feel pain etc. and try to prove otherwise. Not the other way around.

azeirah 11y ago
Perhaps, but do plants? Bacteria? Insects? Where do you draw the line? Is there a line?
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > Is there a line? There's good reason to believe that there isn't. Which means it's ultimately a political question and will always have an arbitrary answer.
  - hodwik 11y ago
    What is that good reason, pray tell?
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      These things evolved, piece by piece, over millions of years.
      - hodwik 11y ago
        As did quadrupeds and bipeds, but if asked to draw a line about their locomotion that is quite easy to do. Have not seen a convincing argument that we will not find an evolutionary line in the sand between sentient and automaton animals.
        vinceguidry 11y ago
        If you look at both quadrupeds and bipeds, you'll see around the time they evolved an interrim period in which creatures existed that were not really quadrupeds or bipeds. Evolutionary success creates only the illusion of lines, none really exist.

doctorstupid 11y ago

Exhibiting a basic survival instinct in a situation of simulated danger is weak evidence for emotion.

ycmbntrthrwaway 11y ago
Exactly. I think authors understand this too. The problem is that they want to make their article popular and get more citations, that is why they add this BS about consciousness to their article. What is sad is that most comments on HN are about "feelings" that their pet fish has and how fscking happy they are when fed.

hellofunk 11y ago

How is this a surprise? The world learned this years ago with Finding Nemo.

dwd 11y ago

For anyone interested, an article on studies into fish intelligence: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5958871/fish-intelligence-smart-research-behavior-pain http://www.vox.com/2014/8/4/5958871/fish-intelligence-smart-... Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131772

stevenjgarner 11y ago

I feel wet