Cichlid IQ's...???

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terd ferguson said:
Woofy, I read on here years ago a fella had trained his oscar to differentiate between a red and black food lid to know which was his food and which was not. Something like, the red lid respresented food and the black lid did not, the oscar would go nuts over the red lid but not the black.
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Im might be wrong but i dont know about cichlids vision but i think what the fish would be responding to is light intensity and reflection of the lid color not the actual color. I think fish recognizing food or you as the feeder cant be used to determine intelligence.




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There is a fabulous book by George W Barlow, called "The Cichlid Fishes Natures Grand Experiment in Evolution" that combines and lays out in understandable terms, much of the research done on cichlid behaviour, cichlid speak, mating rituals etc over many years. It is a must read if your are seriously interested.
 
I bet some fish could learn to pull a string in their tank, if a pellet rolled out every time they did it.
but would they stop when they are full, or just keep doing it?
I'd like to attach a small bell to a string & try it.
 
LOL. got me.

the bell would let me know when it pulls the string.
 
woofy said:
Imo there is no intelligence there is conditioned behavioral responses.
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Not true according to several hundreds of scientific studies/papers in recent years.

Article: Learning in fishes

NPR interview

There's also been some study indicating that a bare, sterile environment (like a bare tank) adversely affects fish brain size.

As far as the original question, cichlids in general are considered to be relatively intelligent (for fish). I'd put cyphotilapia gibberosa among the more intelligent I've had, being curious, quite varied in temperament and behavior, some of them playing little 'games' which sometimes seem aimed at getting my attention. Fish in the family that includes severums, angelfish, and discus appear to be fairly intelligent compared to other fish from my experience.
 
I have a male midas that purposely knocks open the lid of his tank to get fed I know that may sound like BS but he's done it many times...has not done it in a while but used to do it pretty frequently ... What's the most interesting to me is that his parental male did the same thing .. There were times when I was sitting with my back to his tank and he would loudly knock the lid wide open to seemingly get my attention ..I did encourage the behavior by feeding him when he did it but he still associated the lid being open to being fed and this behavior was learned or somehow passed on to his offspring...don't I know if you could call that intelligence...It seems to show some sort of purposeful behavior though...

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cich78 said:
I have a male midas that purposely knocks open the lid of his tank to get fed I know that may sound like BS but he's done it many times...has not done it in a while but used to do it pretty frequently ... What's the most interesting to me is that his parental male did the same thing .. There were times when I was sitting with my back to his tank and he would loudly knock the lid wide open to seemingly get my attention ..I did encourage the behavior by feeding him when he did it but he still associated the lid being open to being fed and this behavior was learned or somehow passed on to his offspring...don't I know if you could call that intelligence...It seems to show some sort of purposeful behavior though...
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my oscar does that, and only starting around the time of day when he normally gets fed.
I have a kenyi who knocks his thermometer against the glass when hungry. at first I thought it was happenstance, but he increases the tapping if not fed.
it sounds like morse code across the room.
 
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