A Conversation With Fish Behavioural Scientist, Dr. Culum Brown

[Lasse]

fan the flames calling for animal liberation and aquarium hobbiest extinction.

I can understand that you do not have had this fight as hard as we have had it in Europe yet. That the aquarium hobby still exist in countries like Sweden, UK and Germany is because we have try to discuss the ethics with fishkeeping among ourselves. For the moment - it is not animal rights that dominate the discussions - it is invasive alien species that dominate. The introduction of Lion Fish in Florida has been widely used in the debate here - arguing for the danger with the aquarium hobby. Of many reasons we need to meet some ethic demands in our hobby - otherwise it will be gone as a hobby sooner or later.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[damselindistress]

Really enjoyed the article @Seawitch I thought you did a lovely job navigating potentially sensitive subject matter while providing some great information backed up with the science. My undergrad is in psychology and behavior analysis - of all living things - has been a lifelong interest of mine. I feel that I know my fish intimately and can usually predict their actions and reactions. They each have distinct personalities, even among conspecifics. My tomini tang hovers in the corner of the tank nearest my armchair with his nose pressed into the corner of the glass practically whimpering for my attention - only to take great delight in whipping up a sandstorm with a flick of his tail and darting off to the other end of the tank when I wiggle my finger at him. He'll stay perfectly still as long as my finger is still but the moment I wiggle it off he goes. It's a game for him. Like a dog fetching a tennis ball - he'd do it all night if I would keep it up lol.

@Lasse I really enjoyed reading about your wrasses putting themselves to bed, I don't have any wrasses but I've noticed as well my fish all go to bed about 30 minutes before lights out. One night I was late getting home and turned their lights on after "lights out" to feed them but they were not having it - they wouldn't even get up for Larry's Reef food ha. I love watching my tomini sleep - he sits on the bottom in his favorite cave and his fins are flopped down on the bottom and his mouth is hanging open - he's dead to the world lol.

Great read - thanks guys

 

[Steve Fast]

this is a fascinating related read (or listen)

https://jonathan-balcombe.com/what-a-fish-knows/

 

[Seawitch]

Thank you @damselindistress and @Steve Fast yeah, I reviewed that book for R2R a while ago. It is a terrific book. https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/book-...he-inner-lives-of-our-underwater-cousins.579/

 

[Paul B]

. For the moment - it is not animal rights that dominate the discussions - it is invasive alien species that dominate.

Lasse, here in New York we are inundated with Alien species. All of our Green crabs, which used to be under every rock are now Japanese Shore crabs. We don't yet have Lionfish here in New York except a few in the summer as they are tropical. (Thank God)

We only seem to get invasive carp, pigeons, snakefish, killer bees, Ebola virus mosquitoes, Kudzu vines and anything else that is brown. Everything invasive is always gray or brown. Why is that?

Why don't we ever get invasive species like Copperband Butterflies, Moorish Idols, Queen Anthias , Purple tangs, mandarins and don't get me started on invasive Supermodels from Sweden. Even retired ones.

 

[Katrina71]

This exact thing came up in our thread recently. I think for any of us that really observe our tanks, it's clear that fish are intelligent. I also laugh about having a 3 second memory. I also think they bond with us much like a dog.

 

[TetoCCB]

Thank you @Brew12 @Lasse and @Paul B

"let me introduce you my dogs, my cats, and, oh, yeah, my fish....that one's a little fearful so don't go too close to the glass...."

What?!?!... All of my friends know Pope (Cardinal Fish), Prince G (Royal Gramma), JJ and Pete (Yellow Watchman Goby and Pistol shrimp) and the crew...

I don’t THINK they think I’ve lost it...

 

[TetoCCB]

...I hope that this good work on fish behavior does not get misused to fan the flames calling for animal liberation and aquarium hobbiest extinction...

Wait until sound recording technology is advanced enough to capture the cries of lettuce being harvested from the garden...

 

[Paul B]

The only reason they don't do well on standardized tests is that they don't have thumbs to hold the pencil.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Nice article, Great pics!!

 

[Steve Fast]

the latest Coral Magazine has an article about Cleaner Wrasses being self aware. It cites a couple of recent publications:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000021

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000112

 

[Lasse]

A video of my yellow wrasse going to sleep - 30 minutes before the light is off



Sincerely Lasse

 

[Seawitch]

Wow @Lasse that’s incredible.

 

[Paul B]

Lasse, mine do that all day long, but I think they have Narcolepsy.

 

[Lasse]

Lasse, mine do that all day long, but I think they have Narcolepsy.

Or they see you and get scared

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Steve Fast]

Or they see you and get scared

Sincerely Lasse

If it is @Paul B, they would be hungry

 

[MnFish1]

Seawitch submitted a new Article:

A Conversation With Fish Behavioural Scientist, Dr. Culum Brown

A few months ago, on April 4, 2019, Reef2Reef published an article called "Depression in Fish". Although the article was well researched, and I personally fact-checked it, we received from our readers a lot of pushback to the article's premise that, yes, fish can and do suffer from depression.

So, when I was fortunate enough to talk to Dr. Culum Brown recently, the first question I asked him was about depression in fish.

Yes, fish can and do suffer from depression. "Their physiology is very similar to our own. Antidepressants work on fish in the same way as they do in humans," he said.

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Dr. Culum Brown is Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He's one of the world's leading experts on fish behaviour and cognition and the co-editor and major contributor to many of the chapters of the textbook, Fish Cognition and Behaviour, a book that I have and am planning to review for Reef2Reef in the future.

He's also Editor of The Journal of Fish Biology, and he runs the "Fish Lab," the Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution of Fishes Laboratory that is part of Macquarie University and which conducts research on freshwater and saltwater fishes.

According to his website, he got his Ph.D. at University of Queensland and did post-doc training at both Cambridge and then University of Edinburgh and in collaboration with the Smithsonian Research Institute in Panama. If you need any further convincing of his credentials, then have a look at his Google Citations page for publication details.

Research at the Fish Lab includes the following: "movement and migrations of Port Jackson sharks, social behaviour of reef manta rays, spatial learning in intertidal gobies, and pain perception and sentience in fish." This information was taken from the Research page of their website.

I asked Dr. Brown a series of questions, and I'm going to let him speak for himself here and quote him directly. Direct quotes are in italics and in blue for ease of reading.

A Manta ray.

Photo is courtesy of @Seawitch ©2019, All Rights Reserved.

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I asked him about the research related to Port Jackson sharks that his lab is working on:

Our PJ research is very varied. We started out by just trying to figure out where they go. Acoustic tracking is a fab way to do that. We can also figure out if there are any environmental variables that drive their movements. But there is heaps of other information you can get from these tags including detailed information about who they hang out with. So we have a pretty good understanding of their social lives as well.

The fish lab, like most research centers, needs press and money. They have one program where you can donate a certain amount and adopt a Port Jackson shark and name him or her and follow his or her movements. But there are also other programs that you can support if you feel so inclined.

We have several projects that rely on crowdfunding, one on smooth stingrays (the biggest marine stingrays in the world), one looking at the movement and behaviour of manta rays, and, of course, the PJ work. Supporting this work with donations of any size is always highly appreciated. And people can buy our lab t-shirts (we don't actually make money on those, but it spreads the word).

A Port Jackson shark, Heterodontus portusjacksoni.

Photo is courtesy of Richard Ling from flickr and used with permission via Creative Commons License 2.0.

I noticed on one of the Fish Lab web pages that there was a grad student studying zebrafinches. I asked Dr. Brown about that because I wondered if that was a fish I hadn't heard of.

Yes, Larissa is one of my few non-fishy students. I've worked on bats and parrots, even mosquitoes before. You'll be pleased to know that her honours work was with fish.

Then I asked about what was new and exciting in fish behaviour research.

Most of our work tries to change public perception of fish behaviour. We are trying to get people to realize that they are pretty sophisticated animals and as such we really ought to treat them better than we currently do. We spend a lot of time talking about how smart fish are and what implications that has for animal welfare and ethics more broadly.

I asked him about quarantine because that's such an important and hotly-debated topic among aquarists.

Yes, if we do freshwater work, then all of our tanks are completely isolated, although we do have some flow-through systems for high-density work with guppies.

Our marine system is separated into 6 different systems, so, if we work with animals from different locations they can be put into different systems. Quarantine is generally not such a big issue when working with marine critters given the high degree of connectivity in that environment.

We tend to source most of our animals from the wild and for the most part they are always healthy. It would be very unusual for us to deliberately sample an unhealthy animal. But when we work with larger sharks we often give them a brief freshwater bath to remove parasites. Where possible, I steer clear of medical treatments simply because that stuff just ends up in our waterways and has all sorts of nasty implications.

What can we—the aquarist population—do to raise awareness about the consciousness of fish? That they’re smarter than we think, and that they can feel pain and depression?

As I suggested previously, fish are way smarter than most people realize, and this has ethical implications. For the most part their brains and physiology are very similar to our own. Our pain receptors, for example, come from our fishy ancestors. They have similar hormones and receptors so their psychology is also similar to ours. They get scared and anxious and depressed just as we do. As aquarists the best you can do is to look after your animals as best you can. We really need to dispel the notion that fish are just ornamental. They are pets like cats and dogs and deserve more attention.

I asked him what he thought about marine aquarists trying to breed fish at home.

I've been breeding my own fish since I was a little kid and trading them for supplies. We should not be taking fish from the wild if at all possible. So I strongly encourage folks to learn about their fish and breed them at home. To me this was always one of the most exciting parts of keeping fish. If they breed then you must be doing something right!

One of the biggest challenges breeding fish is getting the fry to juvenile stage. Let's keep in mind that in the wild the vast majority of babies just don't make it. The key is providing the right food at the right stage. Sadly, some fry just never start to feed once their yolk sac is depleted. It's a key developmental hurdle. I used to spend more time growing live cultures than I did looking after my fish. It's hard work, but I found it rewarding.

Some of the research at the Fish Lab has been on studying the learning of life skills for hatchery-raised fish. Even though there are many programs world-wide attempting to replenish wild fish stocks with hatchery-raised fish, "97% of all hatchery-reared fish die before adulthood," according to Dr. Brown's website.

Then, I asked him about what aquarists can or should do with captive reef systems to make the fish’s life more interesting or mentally challenging.

I think it is important to keep your fish stimulated. Live food, a well planted (complex) aquarium, and the appropriate community is a very good start. I often move things around a little from time to time to make things interesting. Some fish will just move stuff back again, but it keeps them busy!

I asked if there was anything in particular that he hasn't studied yet but is thinking about and would like to in the near future.

There are sooo many things on my to-do list. Every time I go diving I come back with a head full of questions. The other day I was watching a trigger fish moving huge clumps of coral to get at invertebrate prey underneath. There was a stack of other fishes following it around hoping for some scraps. So many questions stem from that one observation. Nature provides me with enough inspiration to keep me going for ever.

Photo is courtesy of @Seawitch ©2019, All Rights Reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since talking with Dr. Brown, I've been thinking about Dr. Temple Grandin, the animal behaviourist at Colorado State University, who has spent most of her life fighting for more humane treatment of livestock headed for slaughter.

To be clear, in an interview with The Dodo, Dr. Brown says that he is not opposed to "fishing or eating meat." What he wants is to change the public perception of the intelligence of fish and to minimize their stress and pain as much as possible, and this is what Dr. Brown considers his life's work.

He wants us to have empathy for fish because they are sentient creatures. This concept of fish being thinking, feeling creatures, each with his or her own personality not unlike cats or dogs is a major paradigm shift for the public.

There's no doubt that some of the reading audience may not agree with these research findings, and some may be uncomfortable with it. That doesn't make the science less true.

In the 1980's, Australian medical doctor, Barry Marshall, had a tough time convincing the medical community that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. He won the Nobel Prize in 2005 for his discovery.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), considered the father of modern genetics, was dismissed as a nut-bar during his lifetime. His theories did not come to be accepted until the early 20th century.

The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer said, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Here is a videotaped interview with Dr. Brown, if you would like to learn more about fish cognition.



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Reef2Reef is grateful to Dr. Brown for taking some time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. We hope to bring you more news from the Fish Lab at Macquarie University in the future.

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References:

https://sites.google.com/site/culumbrown/life-skills-for-hatchery-fishes

https://www.thedodo.com/toward-a-new-fish-consciousnes-601531647.html

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-018-1225-8

https://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1375&context=animsent

https://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317&context=animsent

Byrnes, Evan & Brown, Culum. (2016). Individual personality differences in Port Jackson sharks Heterodontus portusjacksoni. Journal of fish biology. 89. 10.1111/jfb.12993.

Vila Pouca, Catarina & Brown, Culum. (2018). Fish - How to ask them the right questions. 10.1017/9781108333191.011.

http://thefishlab.com/research.html

https://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/medical-breakthroughs#page=6

https://www.medicaldaily.com/mad-sc...crazy-only-be-proven-right-years-later-362010

Brown, C. (2015) Fish intelligence, sentience and ethics. Animal Cognition 18, 1-17

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/history_13

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/marshall/facts/

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We encourage all our readers to join the Reef2Reef forum. It’s easy to register, free, and reefkeeping is much easier and more fun in a community of fellow aquarists. We pride ourselves on a warm and family-friendly forum where everyone is welcome. You will also find lots of contests and giveaways with our sponsors.

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Editor Profile: Cynthia White

Cynthia received her BA in English from NYU a long long time ago. She has been a freelance writer and editor for over 20 years. Now she is a writer and editor on staff at R2R, where her forum nickname is @Seawitch.

As usual - a great article. Maybe for 'Part 2' you could ask for some more of the 'symptoms' of depression, etc that he has noticed in certain fish? And the evidence that fish are 'smart' (i.e. some of the experiments). It was also interesting his thoughts on using Medications/QT. It would be nice to know how long he keeps the fish he does research on - and whether he releases them back into the ocean?

I agree that fish respond to their owners - (they get used to them) - and they definitely know 'who feeds them'.

 

[Steve Fast]

The more I learn about the natural world, the more fascinating it becomes...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

 

[mcarroll]

Thank you @Brew12 @Lasse and @Paul B I was worried how this would be received and hoping I still had a job at the end of the weekend.

I'm trying to wrap my head around this: imagine greeting guests at your house, "let me introduce you my dogs, my cats, and, oh, yeah, my fish....that one's a little fearful so don't go too close to the glass...."

Our house is that house.

 

[mcarroll]

Wait until sound recording technology is advanced enough to capture the cries of lettuce being harvested from the garden...

Check out "What Plants Talk About"
There's another good book called "Mycelium Running" that I think you'd find of interest.

Here's the first one: