Can fish be traumatised?

[Thomas18]

I would say that they defiinetly can be. I had a mbana in my 120 while i was trying to find a place to source the fish that i wanted. It would swim around the tank and whevener i came up to the tank it would follow me and i coulld hand feed it. But once i found the fish that i wanted it was time to move him and he did not like that and certainly didnt want to be moved. after much effort and several attempts to catch him i finally got him and moved him to is new home in a 40 breeder. at that point he wouldnt come out of the cave he chose as his home if he could see me or saw me move. wouldnt eat unless i wasnt looking. he is now at the point where he doesnt hide from me anymore but wont eat put of my hand yet.

 

[jaws7777]

Its amazing how smart they are

 

[Grinch]

Hello; Interesting that we both made useless posts. We have this much in common.

LOL, well served!

I guess some folks "want" fish to have the capacity to be traumatized sort of like people can be. Must fit in to a world view I suppose. I happen to "want" fish to have very little capacity to be traumatized. This is based on a few things. That was the way biology instruction went back in the day, meaning fish have tiny brains with less development than mammal brains (if I recall correctly). I have dissected fish, amphibians and mammals and had a good look at the nervous systems. That view did fit that type evidence.

Another cause for my view is decades of fishing along with some catching. In the post you took exception with it was the part about catching the same fish a few times which was the meat of the post.
Add to these a few decades of keeping fish. I agree with those who stated fish seem to learn what a net is, at least short term. As much as I "want" this to be true learning and not a normal "instinctual" "flee" reaction, there is still a bit of doubt.

Again until some sort of way to "test" for trauma in fish is devised, it is an opinion thing.

I'm glad that you came around to reality eventually! A lack of "mammalian development" does not mean that an organism can (or not) experience pain or trauma, etc. We simply do not know what animals (or plants!) experience and how.

Not sure if its trama but they definitely have memories of unpleasant events.

Fish have very good memories, a fact which some have used to decry the status-quo perception that they are dumb, etc.

We have a pearsei who interacts very differently with my wife and i. The fish is aggressive towards me, bites when im messing around in the tank and wont hand feed with me but will easily hans feed with my wife. We even have vids of him following here back and forth with me he slinks towards the back of the tank.He has gotten moved between tanks quite often i can only assume its the netting and he associates me with being captrured and moved

This fish knows your politics

Thoroughly convinced my male salvini has net related ptsd. Every time you get within like 25ft of the tank holding a net he will see you and hide like a scaredy cat. Seriously. He turns alnost gray again for like an hour and will always be the last one you have to catch if you do have to grab him.

Your fish (and as much as it pains me, Jaws as well), has learned to associate the net with ____________________________________.

 

[Wailua Boy]

I like to hang a net in my tanks when feeding, especially in tanks where fish are removed often; they seem to associate it with food. heehee

 

[skjl47]

I like to hang a net in my tanks when feeding, especially in tanks where fish are removed often; they seem to associate it with food. heehee

hello; I like this idea. I will try it. I have stuck a net in a tank and left it a while before trying to net a fish.

Not that it proves much, I have netted wild small fish ( we called them gambusia. I think they were livebearers.) in my youth. I use to catch them for an Oscar from a creek nearby. I had to be quick. The wild fish also reacted to a net much like any tank fish in that they swam away as quick as they could. As far as I know I was the only one trying to catch them with a small net. I always figured it was a natural flee instinct.

 

[Hendre]

I leave nets in for a bit as well, my fish aren't wary of me so much. Just hide for a while when nets are involved

 

[SteelNSorcery]

I like to hang a net in my tanks when feeding, especially in tanks where fish are removed often; they seem to associate it with food. heehee

Thank you, btw that was an okay test of recall. Also happens if you drop food in with a net. Modulate their experience to modulate behaviour and create a model of the results and extrapolate data from there. The fact is we don't have the ability to know what they "feel" but they can feel pain in a rudimentary sense and events tailor their responses. So physical trauma still has evident effects on their decision making processes, and future stimuli response.

 

[Mighty Wizard]

Fish have memories, thoughts, fears, joys, and dilemmas, and they form an intimate understanding of the world around them. They're intelligent. If they weren't, evolution would've sorted them out of the equation long ago.

A defining need of evolution and an organism to function at all, is the ability to interpret information, act on that information, and in the process store it. The more complicated the environment of an organism is, more it has to be able to remember. Then species social structures can complicate things quite a bit. Obviously they're not as smart as humans (or smart in the same way), but I'd wager that there are plenty of fish that are comparable to dogs and cats in intelligence. It's just very hard for us to recognize intelligence in fish, as they're so far removed from us, from a philosophical standpoint.

Another indication that fish are reasonably intelligent, is the fact that they have a spine, which means that they're Vertebrates, one of the smallest groups of organisms of life. It contains such species as amphibians, reptiles and birds, and also Mammals, which all share common features and plans in their biological make up, one of which is intelligence. This is where we come in. From an evolutionary standpoint, Humans, and most other beings we know for a fact to be intelligent, are actually closely related to Fish, relatively speaking, and so it stands to reason that at least some species of Fish must be considerably intelligent.

Take also the fact that many of the fish we personally keep seem to have different personalities.

There is also plenty of evidence of considerable intelligence outside of the vertebrate class. Take the Octopus for example, a mollusk. Some crustaceans are also known to inhibit signs of intelligence, like the mantis shrimp, and lobsters.