8 ms·

Are fish more intelligent than we realize?

85 points by lkrubner 12y ago

wwweston 12y ago
Related - Steve Yegge's account of his intelligent, exploring, and apparently eventually depressed beta: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-...
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Underneath the bridge The tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets And I'm living off of grass And the drippings from the ceiling But it's okay to eat fish 'Cause they don't have any feelings
- mturmon 12y ago
  One has mixed feelings about linking that piece, because the series was already such a hit on HN. But you have to -- some may not have read them. At some level, the truth or falsity of the proposition, "the betta feels trapped", is irrelevant, because we find what we need in the piece. The most relevant part is the section titled "My betta", and here's a teaser: "I had taken to lying on my bed and watching my betta for an hour or longer. The betta was the sole occupant of the tank in my bedroom. I had filled the tank with plants and copious natural light, so the effect was calming and serene. At times I almost envied the betta for the nice home I'd made for him. "One day, after the betta had been in his new home for several weeks, I found him exploring. It was a most unusual exploration, and one that I will never forget. ...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cubancigar11 12y ago
I find it funny that we look at this information as if it is mind blowing, but if you talk to a fisherman in a 3rd world country, he (ostensibly) will talk about fishes as if they are exactly like people and will have only a 'duh' to say about experimental results mentioned in the article. The idea that _we_ are special or more intelligent or more evolved must be a new one.
- wwweston 12y ago
  I think it may be that as a general population, we spend a lot less time with animals and a lot more time only with other humans than we used to.
underbluewaters 12y ago
No surprise to me as a spearfisher. People have this impression that we go underwater with a "gun" and fish are just lining up in front of you. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fish can tell the difference between your average scuba diver or snorkeler not just by seeing the speargun, but by recognizing body posture and watching your eyes for intent. Their lateral line is a sophisticated sensor used to feel vibrations in the water, so they can literally feel the tension in your muscles. They also learn socially, so if one fish on the reef is nearby and has had a bad experience with a diver, they will sound the alarm for everyone else. Fish really are inquisitive, and can even have individual personalities. It's well worth getting to know them in their own environment.
Eleopteryx 12y ago
I only recently got a betta fish and have often pondered how he feels about his captivity. His tank is about ten feet away from my desk and behind me. I remember turning my head to look at the tank, and being surprised that he somehow realized that I was looking toward him. He eagerly emerged from behind the heater he normally hides behind to swim up to the front of the tank, in the same fashion that he does if I walk past the tank. I often feel guilty, wondering if he would long for a larger area in which to swim, and if I haven't merely imprisoned him in his five gallon tank. (In a way, I rescued him from his tiny cup at the pet store, but my demand for him is why he is even at a pet store.) I deny my house cat the ability to roam outside, but she still seems rather content with eating and sleeping and being petted in an environment devoid of danger. But my betta fish seems to swim along the front of his tank as if he wants to enter the world in which I live, and I couldn't grant him that even if I wanted to. I then take this thought process to a level of absurdity and wonder if our god(s) would peer at us and not fully understand when we suffer or what makes us suffer, for they are men and we are fish.
- VonGuard 12y ago
  Even if your Betta is hyper intelligent, your little home for him is, basically, what he was designed for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betta Bettas tend to live in very constrained environments like puddles, rice paddies, and drains. They're not really built for swimming around a lot, and instead, favor sitting still for long periods of time because they are conserving their body's resources. This is why you can also leave a Betta in dirty water for a long time. I'm staying with some friends right now who, just this past week, rescued a Betta from filthy water in a long empty dorm room. He was still alive, though, because Bettas have a special organ for breathing actual air! Crazy, eh? I say all that to say this: in the wild, your Betta would be sitting completely still in a puddle doing nothing until a bug hops into the water. Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Mine sure does...
  - Eleopteryx 12y ago
    That's comforting. My human brain still senses longing when he swims up to the front of the tank, but I guess I'll never truly understand how he feels. That said, there's a blog post in one of the comments here where the author chronicles a similar sentiment, where his Betta fish at least apparently chose suicide (!). It made me seriously considering researching how to release my fish into the wild. >Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Probably, but I don't believe she's severely depressed on account of her restrictions, even if she can't comprehend that I do it with the intentions of keeping her healthy in the long term. But again, the problem is not knowing. She doesn't wait by the door to make an escape, so I have to guess she's fairly content.
thisjepisje 12y ago
Ugh, somebody should've proofread that article.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  Why the downvotes? Did they fix it? :)
aestra 12y ago
> Most people think of fish as somehow lesser than pigs, cows, chickens and other land animals. Fish are harder to keep than people realize. They are sensitive to a lot more things than other animals. Yet most people who get them seem to not know how to take care of them. They kill them either through either negligence or ignorance. It's almost acceptable in society to accidentally kill captive fish. My roommate in college kept a fish tank that she put a couple fish she got at the fair and I think she bought a bottom feeder to go with them. Well, she wasn't the best at keeping up the cleaning and the tank got quite dirty sometimes. The tank was real nasty and one day she took the fish out and cleaned the tank completely and did a full water change. She put the fish back in and all but one died right away. Apparently you aren't supposed to do that? Shock? Change in chlorine? I don't know. For some reason looking into the tank and seeing those dead fish really affected me. They just died due to a mistake. If you accidentally killed any other pet (cat, dog) it would be horrific but for some reason because it was fish it seemed like it was just nothing. "Whoopie" Also - this was a really good article.
- sejje 12y ago
  We don't personify fish or otherwise form emotional attachments. That's essentially the entire difference in the horror-less deaths of fish vs horror-filled deaths of dogs. (It was likely the quick temperature change that killed them.)
  - aestra 12y ago
    Yeah, exactly. We think of them as merely "decoration" not living creatures. That's why when I saw them die due to a mistake it really affected me. Sure I knew those fish in the living room that were swimming around were live animals but until they were prematurely killed it didn't completely kick in. Then it made me question societal perception. People get fish and kill fish probably just as much as they get fish and keep them alive... I think it was also the fact that I noticed they were dead before she did. If she just said "oh crap the fish are dead" to me I wouldn't have the same reaction.
- tjr 12y ago
  Fish live in a totally different environment than we do. We create an artificial environment for them to live in. If we're too cold in the house, we can readily imagine that the dog is also too cold. If we have insufficient oxygen, then the dog may well have insufficient oxygen. If our air is filled with toxins, then of course the dog's air is filled with toxins. We have little or no direct concept of what the environment is like for the fish, and, without studying it, we don't inherently know what their environment ought to be. Superficially, fish live in water, so it's easy to assume that we can toss them into any body of water and it's fine. But of course that's not true. And the details vary amongst different fish. EDIT: I think also, people tend to view fish as decorations. Or more to the point, aquariums with fish are decorations. You have to maintain them similar to how you have to water houseplants. The fact that they are animals and not plants might be seen as a minor detail.
thisjepisje 12y ago
If a fish sees two other fishes fighting, it can take note of the outcome of that interaction, and it's much more likely to engage and attack the loser — the fish that they think is lower in the hierarchy — and much less likely to attack the winner. Can't we simply explain this more simply as fish remembering which other fishes are stronger or weaker? No need to introduce the concept of hierarchy here.
- jkrems 12y ago
  Where exactly is the difference between "knowing your place in a hierarchy" and "knowing who is stronger and who is weaker"? Seems to me like two different ways of expressing the exact same thing.
  - thisjepisje 12y ago
    Yeah that's true, never mind.
  - asolove 12y ago
    This reminds me of the statement Norvig makes at the beginning of SICP that all AI programs seem like magic until you understand how they work, when they just seem quite unimpressive. What we're learning is not so much that fish are wonderfully intelligent as that the things we take as intelligence are actually not-so-complex patterns.
    - jemfinch 12y ago
      PAIP, not SICP.
      - asolove 12y ago
        Yup, thanks for the correction.
  - baddox 12y ago
    It seems to me more like "estimating threats" than "knowing your place in a hierarchy."
hrjet 12y ago
As a converted vegetarian, I used to make exceptions for fish. Not because I thought they were mindless creatures, but because I had heard that they were rich source of nutrients; omega-3 fatty acids and the like. Until the day I realized that there are some vegetarian foods that can supply these nutrients too. For example, linseeds and walnuts are rich in omega-3 as well. Just putting it out there, in case anyone is on the fence, like I was.
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  Some fish are also very high in mercury[1] content these days. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish
- orbifold 12y ago
  Just so you know the omega-3 acids in fish and walnuts are different. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid, essentially plant oils contain only the ALA variant, while fish oil and some other animal products contain EPA and DHA. Humans can synthesize EPA and DHA from ALA but only with an efficiency of less than 5%. This and a few other facts led me to abandon a strictly vegetarian diet, as I would prefer to not monitor my nutrient intake too carefully .
  - bane 12y ago
    This is why, to successfully get all your nutrients from a plant only diet, you really have to understand the science behind nutrition -- at a very high level. Lots of book reading at the local organic food store and wikipedia articles is astonishingly insufficient. Many of the health problems that this kind of diet createscan take decades to take do noticeable health damage and by then it's too late.
    - thomk 12y ago
      Lifelong vegan here. Any links to scientific studies to help me fully understand your point here?
imgabe 12y ago
There's an implicit assumption here that if a creature is above a certain level of intelligence, we shouldn't eat it. Why not? Presumably the fish are all relatively at around the same level of intelligence to each other, yet fish eat other fish and we don't look at them as immoral for doing so. Animals (including us) eat other animals. That's part of life. It's nothing to feel bad about.
- laurenbee 12y ago
  Fish need to eat other fish to survive. We don't need to eat other animals to survive. It is very possible (and very easy, in some places) to survive and thrive without animal products at all. Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?
  - imgabe 12y ago
    Possible and easy perhaps for a relatively small percentage of the world's population. It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place. Everything that lives suffers and dies eventually. Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human?
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Something to do with the morals of cynically raising them solely to be food for us - there's definitely a responsibility there, different from hunting or eating animals that happened to die.
    - laurenbee 12y ago
      > Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human? These aren't the only two options. We could also stop breeding animals into miserable existences in order to fatten them up and slaughter them for our consumption (which, in addition to causing suffering, causes great harm to the environment as well). > It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place. I don't disagree that this was the case. In the past, people had fewer choices (and sadly, many people today do not have the luxury of choosing which foods they eat -- if they can get enough food at all). I am lucky to have a ton of options available to me, and so I choose to not support suffering.
jobu 12y ago
"Most people think of fish as somehow lesser than pigs, cows, chickens and other land animals." Most people don't realize how incredibly stupid cows and chickens are. There's a reason they don't exist in the wild - they would never survive. Our neighbors raised turkeys and had a special pen with rounded corners because young turkeys will get stuck in normal corners and starve to death.
- derrekl 12y ago
  I think animals raised in captivity lose a bit of their intelligence because they don't have to do anything to survive. If you go to Kauai you'll see wild chickens running all around, and while not brilliant, the ones that made it this far along seem pretty smart. Chickens survive fine in the wild so long as there's no snakes to eat the eggs they lay.
  - wiredfool 12y ago
    Also: rats, raccoons, coyotes, raptors of all types, feral or domesticated dogs, feral or domesticated cats, and the occasional car. Chickens do just fine if there are no effective predators.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  I've seen quite a few wild turkeys. And they almost certainly are the offspring of domesticated turkeys. I am not saying that they are particularly smart, but they are able to survive on their own.
- judk 12y ago
  Most people don't realize how incredibly stupid humans are. They couod never survive in the wild. We have to put up fences so young humans don't fling themselves down staircases and break their spines. What are you trying to say?
antman 12y ago
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Humans vs Dolphins For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much the wheel, New York, wars and so on whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. Douglas Adams
- will_work4tears 12y ago
  I hope you realize that dolphins are not fish...
pygy_ 12y ago
Another fish story: There used to be a couple of koi carps in a pond at my mother's place, one red, one white. One day, the water pump stopped working, and, as the oxygen level in the water was dropping the fishes started to suffocate. When we realized the problem, the white one was already almost belly up. Barely breathing, and unable to move. The red one could still swim, but he was tilting. We brought out the water hose to agitate the water and oxygenate it. It created a current that sent the white fish drifting down and away in while the red one could stay afloat in the safe zone. We tried to alternate the spraying between both, but the white one kept drifting away from the fresh water. To our surprise the red koi started to bring back the white one from the bottom to the surface. He the kept lifting the other in a corner. He probably saved his pal's life. Both recovered, even though the white one kept a 15 degrees tilt for the rest of his life.
bitwize 12y ago
So... fish are friends, not food? The hidden intelligence of fish is not surprising. They are more "sophisticated" than molluscs, and yet we are learning fascinating and frightening things about the intelligence of gastropods.

85 points by lkrubner 12y ago

Related - Steve Yegge's account of his intelligent, exploring, and apparently eventually depressed beta: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-...

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Underneath the bridge The tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped Have all become my pets And I'm living off of grass And the drippings from the ceiling But it's okay to eat fish 'Cause they don't have any feelings
mturmon 12y ago
One has mixed feelings about linking that piece, because the series was already such a hit on HN. But you have to -- some may not have read them. At some level, the truth or falsity of the proposition, "the betta feels trapped", is irrelevant, because we find what we need in the piece. The most relevant part is the section titled "My betta", and here's a teaser: "I had taken to lying on my bed and watching my betta for an hour or longer. The betta was the sole occupant of the tank in my bedroom. I had filled the tank with plants and copious natural light, so the effect was calming and serene. At times I almost envied the betta for the nice home I'd made for him. "One day, after the betta had been in his new home for several weeks, I found him exploring. It was a most unusual exploration, and one that I will never forget. ...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cubancigar11 12y ago

I find it funny that we look at this information as if it is mind blowing, but if you talk to a fisherman in a 3rd world country, he (ostensibly) will talk about fishes as if they are exactly like people and will have only a 'duh' to say about experimental results mentioned in the article. The idea that _we_ are special or more intelligent or more evolved must be a new one.

wwweston 12y ago
I think it may be that as a general population, we spend a lot less time with animals and a lot more time only with other humans than we used to.

underbluewaters 12y ago

No surprise to me as a spearfisher. People have this impression that we go underwater with a "gun" and fish are just lining up in front of you. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fish can tell the difference between your average scuba diver or snorkeler not just by seeing the speargun, but by recognizing body posture and watching your eyes for intent. Their lateral line is a sophisticated sensor used to feel vibrations in the water, so they can literally feel the tension in your muscles. They also learn socially, so if one fish on the reef is nearby and has had a bad experience with a diver, they will sound the alarm for everyone else. Fish really are inquisitive, and can even have individual personalities. It's well worth getting to know them in their own environment.

Eleopteryx 12y ago

I only recently got a betta fish and have often pondered how he feels about his captivity. His tank is about ten feet away from my desk and behind me. I remember turning my head to look at the tank, and being surprised that he somehow realized that I was looking toward him. He eagerly emerged from behind the heater he normally hides behind to swim up to the front of the tank, in the same fashion that he does if I walk past the tank. I often feel guilty, wondering if he would long for a larger area in which to swim, and if I haven't merely imprisoned him in his five gallon tank. (In a way, I rescued him from his tiny cup at the pet store, but my demand for him is why he is even at a pet store.) I deny my house cat the ability to roam outside, but she still seems rather content with eating and sleeping and being petted in an environment devoid of danger. But my betta fish seems to swim along the front of his tank as if he wants to enter the world in which I live, and I couldn't grant him that even if I wanted to. I then take this thought process to a level of absurdity and wonder if our god(s) would peer at us and not fully understand when we suffer or what makes us suffer, for they are men and we are fish.

VonGuard 12y ago
Even if your Betta is hyper intelligent, your little home for him is, basically, what he was designed for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betta Bettas tend to live in very constrained environments like puddles, rice paddies, and drains. They're not really built for swimming around a lot, and instead, favor sitting still for long periods of time because they are conserving their body's resources. This is why you can also leave a Betta in dirty water for a long time. I'm staying with some friends right now who, just this past week, rescued a Betta from filthy water in a long empty dorm room. He was still alive, though, because Bettas have a special organ for breathing actual air! Crazy, eh? I say all that to say this: in the wild, your Betta would be sitting completely still in a puddle doing nothing until a bug hops into the water. Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Mine sure does...
- Eleopteryx 12y ago
  That's comforting. My human brain still senses longing when he swims up to the front of the tank, but I guess I'll never truly understand how he feels. That said, there's a blog post in one of the comments here where the author chronicles a similar sentiment, where his Betta fish at least apparently chose suicide (!). It made me seriously considering researching how to release my fish into the wild. >Your cat, on the other hand, probably wants to go outside and murder things. Probably, but I don't believe she's severely depressed on account of her restrictions, even if she can't comprehend that I do it with the intentions of keeping her healthy in the long term. But again, the problem is not knowing. She doesn't wait by the door to make an escape, so I have to guess she's fairly content.

thisjepisje 12y ago

Ugh, somebody should've proofread that article.

thisjepisje 12y ago
Why the downvotes? Did they fix it? :)

aestra 12y ago

> Most people think of fish as somehow lesser than pigs, cows, chickens and other land animals. Fish are harder to keep than people realize. They are sensitive to a lot more things than other animals. Yet most people who get them seem to not know how to take care of them. They kill them either through either negligence or ignorance. It's almost acceptable in society to accidentally kill captive fish. My roommate in college kept a fish tank that she put a couple fish she got at the fair and I think she bought a bottom feeder to go with them. Well, she wasn't the best at keeping up the cleaning and the tank got quite dirty sometimes. The tank was real nasty and one day she took the fish out and cleaned the tank completely and did a full water change. She put the fish back in and all but one died right away. Apparently you aren't supposed to do that? Shock? Change in chlorine? I don't know. For some reason looking into the tank and seeing those dead fish really affected me. They just died due to a mistake. If you accidentally killed any other pet (cat, dog) it would be horrific but for some reason because it was fish it seemed like it was just nothing. "Whoopie" Also - this was a really good article.

sejje 12y ago
We don't personify fish or otherwise form emotional attachments. That's essentially the entire difference in the horror-less deaths of fish vs horror-filled deaths of dogs. (It was likely the quick temperature change that killed them.)
- aestra 12y ago
  Yeah, exactly. We think of them as merely "decoration" not living creatures. That's why when I saw them die due to a mistake it really affected me. Sure I knew those fish in the living room that were swimming around were live animals but until they were prematurely killed it didn't completely kick in. Then it made me question societal perception. People get fish and kill fish probably just as much as they get fish and keep them alive... I think it was also the fact that I noticed they were dead before she did. If she just said "oh crap the fish are dead" to me I wouldn't have the same reaction.
tjr 12y ago
Fish live in a totally different environment than we do. We create an artificial environment for them to live in. If we're too cold in the house, we can readily imagine that the dog is also too cold. If we have insufficient oxygen, then the dog may well have insufficient oxygen. If our air is filled with toxins, then of course the dog's air is filled with toxins. We have little or no direct concept of what the environment is like for the fish, and, without studying it, we don't inherently know what their environment ought to be. Superficially, fish live in water, so it's easy to assume that we can toss them into any body of water and it's fine. But of course that's not true. And the details vary amongst different fish. EDIT: I think also, people tend to view fish as decorations. Or more to the point, aquariums with fish are decorations. You have to maintain them similar to how you have to water houseplants. The fact that they are animals and not plants might be seen as a minor detail.

thisjepisje 12y ago

If a fish sees two other fishes fighting, it can take note of the outcome of that interaction, and it's much more likely to engage and attack the loser — the fish that they think is lower in the hierarchy — and much less likely to attack the winner. Can't we simply explain this more simply as fish remembering which other fishes are stronger or weaker? No need to introduce the concept of hierarchy here.

jkrems 12y ago
Where exactly is the difference between "knowing your place in a hierarchy" and "knowing who is stronger and who is weaker"? Seems to me like two different ways of expressing the exact same thing.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  Yeah that's true, never mind.
- asolove 12y ago
  This reminds me of the statement Norvig makes at the beginning of SICP that all AI programs seem like magic until you understand how they work, when they just seem quite unimpressive. What we're learning is not so much that fish are wonderfully intelligent as that the things we take as intelligence are actually not-so-complex patterns.
  - jemfinch 12y ago
    PAIP, not SICP.
    - asolove 12y ago
      Yup, thanks for the correction.
- baddox 12y ago
  It seems to me more like "estimating threats" than "knowing your place in a hierarchy."

hrjet 12y ago

As a converted vegetarian, I used to make exceptions for fish. Not because I thought they were mindless creatures, but because I had heard that they were rich source of nutrients; omega-3 fatty acids and the like. Until the day I realized that there are some vegetarian foods that can supply these nutrients too. For example, linseeds and walnuts are rich in omega-3 as well. Just putting it out there, in case anyone is on the fence, like I was.

stock_toaster 12y ago
Some fish are also very high in mercury[1] content these days. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish
orbifold 12y ago
Just so you know the omega-3 acids in fish and walnuts are different. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid, essentially plant oils contain only the ALA variant, while fish oil and some other animal products contain EPA and DHA. Humans can synthesize EPA and DHA from ALA but only with an efficiency of less than 5%. This and a few other facts led me to abandon a strictly vegetarian diet, as I would prefer to not monitor my nutrient intake too carefully .
- bane 12y ago
  This is why, to successfully get all your nutrients from a plant only diet, you really have to understand the science behind nutrition -- at a very high level. Lots of book reading at the local organic food store and wikipedia articles is astonishingly insufficient. Many of the health problems that this kind of diet createscan take decades to take do noticeable health damage and by then it's too late.
  - thomk 12y ago
    Lifelong vegan here. Any links to scientific studies to help me fully understand your point here?

imgabe 12y ago

There's an implicit assumption here that if a creature is above a certain level of intelligence, we shouldn't eat it. Why not? Presumably the fish are all relatively at around the same level of intelligence to each other, yet fish eat other fish and we don't look at them as immoral for doing so. Animals (including us) eat other animals. That's part of life. It's nothing to feel bad about.

laurenbee 12y ago
Fish need to eat other fish to survive. We don't need to eat other animals to survive. It is very possible (and very easy, in some places) to survive and thrive without animal products at all. Why should animals suffer for our pleasure and/or convenience?
- imgabe 12y ago
  Possible and easy perhaps for a relatively small percentage of the world's population. It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place. Everything that lives suffers and dies eventually. Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human?
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Something to do with the morals of cynically raising them solely to be food for us - there's definitely a responsibility there, different from hunting or eating animals that happened to die.
  - laurenbee 12y ago
    > Why is it better for an animal to die and feed maggots than to die and feed a human? These aren't the only two options. We could also stop breeding animals into miserable existences in order to fatten them up and slaughter them for our consumption (which, in addition to causing suffering, causes great harm to the environment as well). > It's doubtful that the industrialized society that enables a portion of the population to live without using animal products would ever have developed if we hadn't used animal products in the first place. I don't disagree that this was the case. In the past, people had fewer choices (and sadly, many people today do not have the luxury of choosing which foods they eat -- if they can get enough food at all). I am lucky to have a ton of options available to me, and so I choose to not support suffering.

jobu 12y ago

"Most people think of fish as somehow lesser than pigs, cows, chickens and other land animals." Most people don't realize how incredibly stupid cows and chickens are. There's a reason they don't exist in the wild - they would never survive. Our neighbors raised turkeys and had a special pen with rounded corners because young turkeys will get stuck in normal corners and starve to death.

derrekl 12y ago
I think animals raised in captivity lose a bit of their intelligence because they don't have to do anything to survive. If you go to Kauai you'll see wild chickens running all around, and while not brilliant, the ones that made it this far along seem pretty smart. Chickens survive fine in the wild so long as there's no snakes to eat the eggs they lay.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  Also: rats, raccoons, coyotes, raptors of all types, feral or domesticated dogs, feral or domesticated cats, and the occasional car. Chickens do just fine if there are no effective predators.
seanflyon 12y ago
I've seen quite a few wild turkeys. And they almost certainly are the offspring of domesticated turkeys. I am not saying that they are particularly smart, but they are able to survive on their own.
judk 12y ago
Most people don't realize how incredibly stupid humans are. They couod never survive in the wild. We have to put up fences so young humans don't fling themselves down staircases and break their spines. What are you trying to say?

antman 12y ago

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Humans vs Dolphins For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much the wheel, New York, wars and so on whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons. Douglas Adams

will_work4tears 12y ago
I hope you realize that dolphins are not fish...

pygy_ 12y ago

Another fish story: There used to be a couple of koi carps in a pond at my mother's place, one red, one white. One day, the water pump stopped working, and, as the oxygen level in the water was dropping the fishes started to suffocate. When we realized the problem, the white one was already almost belly up. Barely breathing, and unable to move. The red one could still swim, but he was tilting. We brought out the water hose to agitate the water and oxygenate it. It created a current that sent the white fish drifting down and away in while the red one could stay afloat in the safe zone. We tried to alternate the spraying between both, but the white one kept drifting away from the fresh water. To our surprise the red koi started to bring back the white one from the bottom to the surface. He the kept lifting the other in a corner. He probably saved his pal's life. Both recovered, even though the white one kept a 15 degrees tilt for the rest of his life.

bitwize 12y ago

So... fish are friends, not food? The hidden intelligence of fish is not surprising. They are more "sophisticated" than molluscs, and yet we are learning fascinating and frightening things about the intelligence of gastropods.