It’s a Tang!! It Looks Just Like Me! Attack!

[HBtank]

Sight is one parameter - but there is others too

Sincerely Lasse

Of course, all senses are used, I am not arguing otherwise. This thread is arguing that one isn't used for a particular behavior.

In the case of fishing with artificial lures, the sense of "smell/taste" is often used after a strike. Sight is the primary sense.

 

[HBtank]

Possibly. Is a baby deer instinctively afraid of humans? Not really. It’s a learned “instinct”. When born it has no reason to fear humans. It’s taught that by its mother. How, through smell and pheromones. Mother deer alerts when she smells a human. Baby deer senses mothers fear. Baby deer smells human as well. Baby deer associates mothers fear with the smell of a human. That is then imprinted in baby deer memories/neurons for fight or flight and from then on it will fear humans. a Lot of things we view as animal instinct are actually learned events from their elders. It’s just done differently than we do. Now there are other things that are truly instinctual. Baby turtle as soon as they hatch instinctually run to the ocean so they don’t get eaten. Don’t think anyone taught then that.

Using species from the class of Mammalia is a pretty poor choice in this context, yes, they are many examples of learned behavior in mammals. We are special

Your example falls apart for any other class, just like it did with reptiles (baby turtles),

 

[HBtank]

Sometimes I wonder if they are stupid, or is it we just aren’t smart enough to understand their logic tree. I spent three hours this afternoon watching my new hippo tang play dead In several different places in the tank. One would think that has some superior intelligence at play, all be it a little silly from our perspective. Just like a possum, she’s doing it so no one will pay attention to her while she scopes everything out. Once she got comfortable it was time for Dory to swim swim swim.

Oh, I definitely think we vastly underrate many classes of animals in their intelligence.

But fish... not as much. Now there are certainly some exceptions with longer lived species in my experience, but in general I have found age to be a pretty solid correlation, the older the fish is, the smarter it seems. For instance, catching a Mahi Mahi which only lives only a couple years is ridiculously easy, but a Blue Fin Tuna that lives decades can be very very hard (not just due to its size).

 

[jabberwock]

Possibly. Is a baby deer instinctively afraid of humans? Not really. It’s a learned “instinct”. When born it has no reason to fear humans. It’s taught that by its mother. How, through smell and pheromones. Mother deer alerts when she smells a human. Baby deer senses mothers fear. Baby deer smells human as well. Baby deer associates mothers fear with the smell of a human. That is then imprinted in baby deer memories/neurons for fight or flight and from then on it will fear humans. a Lot of things we view as animal instinct are actually learned events from their elders. It’s just done differently than we do. Now there are other things that are truly instinctual. Baby turtle as soon as they hatch instinctually run to the ocean so they don’t get eaten. Don’t think anyone taught then that.

A baby deer is afraid of everything except its mother. Trust me, I know.

 

[AKL1950]

A baby deer is afraid of everything except its mother. Trust me, I know.

I grew up on a farm in Texas and had baby deer as pets. They weren’t afraid. They never learned to fear humans before their mother was shot by a not so bright human who couldn’t tell the difference between a doe and a buck. Unfortunately we had to keep them as pets, because we couldn’t teach them how to be afraid of coyote’s and bob cats.