# Bigger fish to force schooling



## herezor (1 Jun 2016)

Hi
I have a 112L (80x40x35 cm) tank with white cloud mountain minnows (18) that wander around on their own but do not school. I had read that they are good schoolers, but they seem to be really happy in my tank and do not care about each other. They only group and school when the lights go off at night or someone passes close to the tank.






So, if fear is what makes them school, I am planning to add a dwarf gourami. They will not attack the minnows, but their presence will make them group. I know that this will stress them a little but according to my conclusion, everyone that has a schooling fish that schools in his/her tank is not doing everything he/she can do to eliminate the stress those fishes have. Otherwise, we would all have non-schooling fish in our tanks even if that species tend to school.

So, the question is, do you think of another bigger fish like dwarf gourami that could force minnows to school?. Obviously, not agressive or predatory. How about ramirezi?


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## Aqua360 (1 Jun 2016)

Hmmm. It'd make more sense to go for a tighter shoal such as rummy-nose, rather than intentionally stress a fish...

With the white clouds, I suspect you may find that stressing them induces hiding behaviours; rather than shoaling, from my own experience with them.

You could always try the rams or dwarf gourami though, see how you get on


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## herezor (1 Jun 2016)

Well, as you can see there are not a lot of places to hide as I wanted open space just for that.. to increase schooling or shoaling chances. But if, as you say, they will tend to hide, then that is not a viable solution for me.

The rams usually stay close to the bottom which, in theory will push the minnows to go up. Actually, on the left, where the stones are forming a V, there is a place that resembles a cave where the ram could make the nest or establish its territory (or not, who knows what they would think). The dwaf gourami stays at the top, so this could certainly encourage the minnows to hide at the bottom.

So maybe it would be a better idea to use rams. That may also help control my red cherry population which is going mad these days...  with 30 breeding adults and maybe 20-25 juveniles. What it is impossible, at least at this moment, is to change the minnows for rummys or harlequins.

Thank Aqua


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## mr. luke (1 Jun 2016)

I think it is irresponsible to stress your fish out intentionally.
I feel aquascaping sometimes gets in the way if animal welfare.


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## dw1305 (1 Jun 2016)

Hi all,





herezor said:


> I have a 112L (80x40x35 cm) tank with white cloud mountain minnows (18) that wander around on their own but do not school.





herezor said:


> Otherwise, we would all have non-schooling fish in our tanks even if that species tend to school.


Basically they are just happy and don't feel threatened. Very few fish will school tightly unless there is a threat (real or perceived). 

The only fish that I've kept that usually swam in any sort of formation were Marbled Hatchets, and they all waited in the flow from the spray-bar, a bit like very misshapen Trout. 





herezor said:


> So maybe it would be a better idea to use rams.


<"Rams"> like much warmer water than <"White Cloud Mountain Minnows">, and much softer, warmer water than Red Cherry Shrimps.

If you want a small cichlid to go with your minnows, then a pair of_ <"Apistogramma borellii">_ would be your best bet.

cheers Darrel


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## Nelson (1 Jun 2016)

Surely its better for them to be happy than schooling !.
Why is it so important for them to school ?.


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## herezor (1 Jun 2016)

mr. luke said:


> I think it is irresponsible to stress your fish out intentionally.
> I feel aquascaping sometimes gets in the way if animal welfare.



Well, yes you are wright, but intentionally or unintentionally the final effect is that they are stressed. Actually the fact of having them in a cube stresses them. My point is that if we all have schooling fish, we should search for the cause that made them school and when finding it, correct it to avoid it. But most people search or look for fish that school. And so did I. Maybe if a fish in their natural environment schools due to fear and we do not reproduce that effect in our aquarium, they stop schooling and they may develop physical or behavioural effects not desired.

So maybe having a fish that normally schools in nature not schooling in an aquarium is not such a good thing...


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## dw1305 (1 Jun 2016)

Hi all, 





herezor said:


> Maybe if a fish in their natural environment schools due to fear and we do not reproduce that effect in our aquarium, they stop schooling and they may develop physical or behavioural effects not desired.
> So maybe having a fish that normally schools in nature not schooling in an aquarium is not such a good thing.


I'm pretty sure that the fish that are exploring the tank are happy fish.

For most small fish being in the open with no overhead cover is very stressful, if you give them a more complex environment they begin to feel more secure and then hunt for food etc. This is why you add dithers to small cichlids, they become more active when other small fish are out and foraging.

Have a look at <"What is wrong with my ....">.

Some fish will naturally travel together in a loose shoal (like _Corydoras hastatus_), but a lot of fish (like Neon Tetra and Pencil fish) will mainly forage singly or in two and threes.

cheers Darrel


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## mr. luke (1 Jun 2016)

Have a look on YouTube at wild tetra.  You will notice a large number of them are shoaling at all.
Schooling is a response to threat, no two ways about it. I'd much rather have different behaviour from a haply fish than forced shoaling through fear.
None of my tetra shoal to any degree. My keyholes seem to enjoy each others company but I think that is beyond most tetras.


Just my very strong opinion.


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## Lindy (1 Jun 2016)

I have boraras brigittae in with dwarf gourami, betta simplex and betta channoides. None of the large fish bother with the tiny rasbora and the rasbora are pretty chilled out therefore swim all over the place without tight shoaling. Actively trying to stress your fish for a desired look is wrong. You are not recreating nature as it is unlikely any of the serious shoalers would be found in the small numbers we keep in our tanks.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk


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## PARAGUAY (1 Jun 2016)

The subject of schooling and shoaling is not straight forward many tank bred fish I think certain Barbs and Tetras in particular have lost this inclination anyway to some extent..  Go in a aquatic shop and assume those example Penguin Tetras look splendid shoaling you buy seven or eight only to find at home three at one side of the tank one in the middle  three or two scattering.In the shop they had nowhere to go probably bareish tank full of them moving every time a customer looked at them heading to one side thinking feeding time and are not shoaling? In the wild there may be thousands different species togetther for reasons given security predators etc but even then they may split up into small groups of fifty something for parts of the tropical day(Amazon studies)coming back to greater numbers for feeding.Best to create a tank with plenty of cover plants etc with a front open area possibly subdued lighting or/and floating plants and personally a lot of one or two species in the largest tank possible to have a chance of shoaling but at the end of the day happy fish are healthy whether shoaling or not


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## ZeeDeveel (7 Jun 2016)

Forcing fish to stick together because you've trapped them in a small tank with a fish that could potentially eat them is unkind. I'm sure you know that to be the truth. Perhaps you can find someone who will adopt them and you can get a different species?


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## Derek113 (14 Jun 2016)

Mountain minnows are such an unrated fish. Pay closer attention to how they interact with each other. I find shoal interaction more pleasing than the desire to have them ball up like sardines.
I have 30 of them and apart from the initial intro to the aquarium they never shoal together.


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## zozo (15 Jun 2016)

herezor said:


> if fear is what makes them school



It's not fear, but cautiousness what triggers them to school when something strange is passing the tank. This is a very natural behaivor for almost all fish which are lower at the food chain. Hence that's what makes them schoaling fish.. Fish not schooling are in general solitary and predatory, opportunistically laying around to attack something swimming by like a pike would do. Tho schoaling fish can also be predatory, small ones low at the food chain are in general micro predatory.

Introducing a ditter fish to trigger schooling can work to a certain extend, but if not a real treath it eventualy will result in both mixing and showing same behaivor again. If a real treath it can only result in one eating the other.  Ditter fish ussualy work quite possitive to make very shy species less shy and feel safer and copy this behaivor.

Read this about "Habitat" and look at your setup and ask yourself the question what could be changed to make it more natural for you..  If i look at your tank i see the majority of them still hang around in the middle of the tank rather close together compared to the over all demension of your setup. What is that plant you are growing right and left in the back ground? Pogestemon erectus? Anway grow it bigger and create a V shape plant setup where the sides are heavily planted and there is free swimming space in the middle. They like free swimming space when feeling safe.. Now this free space is all over the tank in your case. 

That what they would do in nature as well, use the free swimming space in densly planted areas, then if in danger can flee into the vegitation..


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## PARAGUAY (15 Jun 2016)

I dont think fish have fear or emotions in that sense as zozo says. In the Amazon( say a tetra) anything living over 12months old would be the exception predation the biggest reason.Its a instinct to shoal or school done as a necessatity for survival,safety in numbers rather than "fear" of being alone.Newly born ducklings know to hide when a few hours old from a mothers call thats instinct survival of the species it would be too young for "fear".When my dog looks at me is he thinking thats my lovely master or I will stick with this bloke he throws the ball and oh those treats.I  Know what I like to think but  would I be wrong ?


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## Derek113 (16 Jun 2016)

I would say shoaling is just a numbers game. If you are in a crowd of say 200 people it would increase your chance of not being noticed.
On the opposite, if there was just me and you then we both have a 50% chance of being chosen.
Fish shoal purely to maximise their chance to survive.


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## zozo (16 Jun 2016)

Its a bit the chicken or the egg question..  One we only can try to answer with educated guesses and theories in what we believe is true. That would be something like creationism vs evolution.. Now i'm far from a professional sceintist and rather not make to many bold claims since i'm rather not always spot on up to date when it comes to science evolution. There are many thing believed to be true for a very long time till somebody proofed us all wrong. And there are still many mysterious things going on in nature where we even not even began with scratching the icebergs tip.. So actualy when it comes to this i realy do not know what to believe and just keep the churge somewhere in the middle and just try to suck it all in with a rather agnostic viewpoint. I don't know and can't know from where i stand.. 

What is highly intresting is why do all lifeforms behave or just look the way they do? And this even without anybody, teaching them. How do they know what they know? Wisdom is spread geneticaly that's a prooven fact.. I once took a book from the library about the subject and when i was done reading the plot only got thicker?

And when it comes to emotions humans tend to humanize animal behavior, i guess this is only human to use human ratio to explain things.. And even what do we know about emotions ourself? Only thing we have is the knowledge of basic emotions we all posses like fear and joy etc. But what it realy does inside somebody is still very personal and something impossible to share. I have my fear and you have yours and how often you tell me about yours i can only percieve your fear in the way i know how i feel it. Empathy goes a long way, i even do not know if it realy excists the way we try to manage it?


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## scootamum (16 Jun 2016)

I think that there is just so much that we don't understand about fish, and I think we greatly underestimate their cognitive abilities.  You've most probably all seen this story already, but here's a link for those who haven't.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/36474434

Whatever the truth of the matter is, ultimately we are responsible for their welfare, so should treat them with respect, and provide for their needs - clean, suitable water.  A stress free environment (according to their potential size and needs), and food according to their dietary requirements.

I'll get off my soapbox now...


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## zozo (16 Jun 2016)

I also keep some goldfish, in warmer times outside and in colder times they go inside.. And i experienced they realy have a social family bond, one year i took 1 fish earlier inside and he became noticably depressed. He didn't eat and only lay silently in the corner close to the bottom for days. When i took his mates inside he got realy excited and there was some kind of greeting play going on for hours.. Anyway it was heart warming to see how they reacted to eachother and only where apart for a few days. And i'll never do that again, to me they clearly have something like emotions..


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## Derek113 (16 Jun 2016)

Fish have evolved like any other animal, they have all adapted to an environment. 
Fish belong to a hostile environment weather predator or prey. Both have developed ways to survive. Safety in numbers is a survival technic. 

If you were to find yourself lost in a dark forrest your senses would be doing over time. Thats because its not viewed as a safe place to be alone.  
Humans have adapted over thousands of years, our biology and make up has been the same for thousands of years.


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## zozo (16 Jun 2016)

Well the question who told the fish that schooling in numbers is safer stays rather an enigma.. What is it? Is it a hidden genetical intelligence or do they indeed percieve their surrounding and dangers with a consiousness and tell eachother "Lets number up then we seem bigger and have more survival chance". For many years scientists have doubted this and only measured intelligence by brain size and called it just instinct. Performed certain tests and with the results concluded they must be rather stupid. Still if it is instinct it has to come from somewhere. Then there still must be a rather intelligent consious perception of invironment to experimentally learn and make the conclusion this is safer and the other is not.. Isn't it?

I can't get over this with my way of binary thinking connecting dots. Something just doesn't add up here.. It might be pure chance that fish actualy school for a very other reason and there once where also fish not doing that, these are the ones which didn't make it and only the schooling varieties survived the tooth of time till now.

I realy do not know, but i rather believe that humans are so fond about them selfs and their own invention called intelligence and their so called pattent on reasoning in which we like to rule and own the world are much to proud to give something like a tiny fish a reasonable consiousnes.

Read a few biology books for example botanica after all this is a botanic forum.. You find it in all of them no matter what the subject is at least i did and i can give a small anecdote about what very often is writen by scientists i bet you have red some of statements like this too. It is in this case about an author writing a description of a carnivorious plant the Pinguicula. This one catches insects with it's sticky leaves.. Now the author/scientist wrote "This plant grows a very long flower stem because it prevents the polinating insects from getting caught on his leaves."  The matter a fact he's actualy making the statement the plants is doing this because of that, so the plant most have an intelligent consious perception of it's surroundings or else it could never have done this in the first place. Now giving a plant this property is rather hillarious, it has no eyes no nose nor ears and not even braintissue. I'm still bafled that a botanist/scientist writes something like this and be serious about it in an informative and educative descritpion about a plant. I'm sorry i realy have no idea and doubt his intelligents and ask myself what school did this poor chap go to.

And if it's true then a fish must be rather one hell of a smart bugger..

Who or what is taking us for a ride here?


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## AverageWhiteBloke (16 Jun 2016)

Is it not just some evolution thing? With humans supposedly the reason we don't like high pitched noises is because back in the monkey days they would scream high pitched to warn of predators. It's been tens of thousands of years since any of us were monkeys but rubbing polystyrene together or fingers down a black board still gets my senses working over time even though I'm perfectly conscious that there is no threat to me. I can't see why a similar reaction isn't built into the DNA of any living creature, it's just a healthy defence mechanism.

With respect to fish consciousness, they must have some level of thought power rather than just an eating breeding machine. There are even plants that can sense certain types of insects. I myself have witnessed personally fish that would go about their daily business when my wife and daughter walk past the tank but come up to the corner when I was there, this had to have some level of decision making to know that neither of them are going to feed them and they aren't a source of food.

As for stress, once the larger fish has been introduced for a while and the other fish realise it's not s threat I don't suppose they are any further stressed than say a human crossing the road. You are aware of a potential threat but as long as you maintain a healthy distance and keep an eye on the potential it's no major worry. I recently added two Panda Corys to my RCS tank temporarily until the tank they will end up in is matured, for the first two or three days they scattered when the Pandas were rummaging in the gravel for food, now the shrimp will quite happily sit on their their backs waiting for left over algae flakes. Obviously at some point here the shrimp have decided they are no threat and actually beneficial because they stir up the gravel releasing particles of food. That's conscious decision making and just from a shrimp.

I don't think adding bigger fish is unnecessarily stressing anything, as long as it poses no real threat and in fact imitating the wild as much as possible is healthier for the inhabitants. If the OP hadn't mentioned stress and the question had simply been can I add a pair of Apistos to my tank with the other occupants most would have said yeah they'll be fine.

You have to ask the question, in real life would some apistos chase away smaller fish from their spawning territory to keep their fry safe? Do small shoaling fish get chased about by larger fish? Do these fish live in similar water conditions? If you can say yes to all three then ethically I'm good with that. Soon as it fits in it's mouth and it would have a bite the answer is no. Other than that can't see any harm. Our fish are fat, lazy, prima donnas anyway, won't do them any harm to have to act normal as nature intended.

You wouldn't take trees and ropes out of a monkey enclosure at the Zoo to prevent them possibly injuring themselves. They are there to provide stimulation and stop the monkey getting bored, I see no big difference here.


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## alto (16 Jun 2016)

I really enjoyed both these posts 




AverageWhiteBloke said:


> If the OP hadn't mentioned stress and the question had simply been can I add a pair of Apistos to my tank with the other occupants most would have said yeah they'll be fine.


This!
The OP used a poor choice of words & suffered for it I suspect ...


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## AverageWhiteBloke (16 Jun 2016)

I'm all for fish welfare and creating the best conditions I can but not to the point of them not having a life. I see fish chasing each other and the interactions between the different species as part of its life. 

I think that's the point of nature aquarium, warts and all.


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## dw1305 (17 Jun 2016)

Hi all, 





AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Is it not just some evolution thing? With humans supposedly the reason we don't like high pitched noises is because back in the monkey days they would scream high pitched to warn of predators. It's been tens of thousands of years since any of us were monkeys but rubbing polystyrene together or fingers down a black board still gets my senses working over time even though I'm perfectly conscious that there is no threat to me. I can't see why a similar reaction isn't built into the DNA of any living creature, it's just a healthy defence mechanism.


 I think that is right. You have innate behaviour in all animals. This is from <"Jerry Coyne's web site">.

It isn't only an aversion to high pitch noises we share with Chimps (and other primates), it is <"blood groups"> (A, B, O, Rhesus factors etc.). Other genes will be "conserved" from a much earlier ancestor, like the <"HOX genes we share"> with _Drosophila_ (Fruit Flies) etc.

If small fish that have a genetic disposition to shoal (and avoid open spaces) pass on more of their genes to the next generation then, over time, natural selection will mean that the population of small fish will have more fish that exhibit shoaling behaviour and avoid open spaces.

If a new predator then arrives that avoids open spaces and is particularly adept at catching shoaling fish, then natural selection (the new predator) will begin to select for fish that like open spaces and avoid aggregations of fish. 

Over evolutionary time a range of selective pressures will define behaviour.

cheers Darrel


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## AverageWhiteBloke (17 Jun 2016)

I guess that goes for anything with a flight or fight mechanism including humans Darrel. If you’re on your own and there's a threat there's a high probability that you will be the victim, stand with two other people and you reduce that risk to 1 in 3 and so on and so forth. Over time animals have evolved to play the numbers game. Some fish have body shapes or markings so the predator can't take work out which end is the head confusing it into not knowing which way it will dart or markings that help it blend into its back ground. these are long term evolution probably taking thousands if not millions of years of mutation. The simplest quickest evolutionary defence mechanism is to be part of a group.


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## zozo (18 Jun 2016)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Some fish have body shapes or markings so the predator can't take work out which end is the head confusing it into not knowing which way it will dart or markings that help it blend into its back ground. these are long term evolution probably taking thousands if not millions of years of mutation.



This statement in particular is where i fall off my chair and is completely out of my grasp.. Even if it has millions of years evolution, fast or slow then still it must be a rather very intelligent process making that decision to grow in a deceptive form or color the fool a predator.. The most striking animals on this planet when it comes to that are among other the Phyllium Giganteum.. Behavior ok this i can grasp, but looks not so very much.

In the end for me i rather believe it's just a nice theory to give some more intrigue to the story, since no human ever witnesed any form of evolution like this, we are much to short on this planet for that. If it is not just chance and incidentaly fooling predators there must be something in animals and maybe even plants going on of which we are very reluctand to give credit to for what ever reason.

Nominalism??

We are smashing flies for hundreds of thousends of years and still they didn't grow a helmet..


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## Derek113 (18 Jun 2016)

How great it would be to see a fly wearing a hard hat with a tin of pepper spray!

I watched a documentary about killer whales killing great white sharks. This is a great example of animal evolution. It now means sharks will have to find ways of avoiding orcas.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (18 Jun 2016)

zozo said:


> We are smashing flies for hundreds of thousends of years and still they didn't grow a helmet..



Haha, I think even evolution would struggle to grow a helmet. Although it's not that far from the truth. Is a snail  a slug wearing a helmet? Sort of and  that's what evolution is about. Darwins theory, although a theory is pretty much accepted as being correct by almost everyone  except religious people. It's only theory because unlike religion, science everything is a theory because it could all change with some further evidence. I heard the other day that drinking hot coffee can cause cancer. A theory with  little evidence to support it. Whereas Darwins theory has unlimited amounts of evidence to support it. Still a theory though because theoretically next week God could turn up and it all be wrong.

I think Darwins book "origin of species" is actually available has a free download on ebook readers and worth a read. It's not that the fish is aware of any of the changes and somehow makes any changes it's just a pure chance genetic mutation that works out to be beneficial.



zozo said:


> since no human ever witnesed any form of evolution like this, we are much to short on this planet for that.



We witness evolution and genetic mutation every single day, its just doesn't matter that much. For instance you hear of people with 3 nipples, webbed feet Strawberry Marks etc. They are all mutations of some Gene. All the various Discus strains all mutations. You can even do it yourself if you lived long enough, see a fish with something weird about it that makes it different like an extra long dorsal fin. Separate that fish from the rest and constantly in breed it over time with it own close family members selected for having long fins and eventually all the young will look like that.

When you add energy to proteins and amino acids random cells are created and these cells mutate into various life forms Now in the case of our fish with the eye on the other end of the body, obviously it's not an eye it's just a marking that looks like an eye and the fish isn't even aware its got it. One day a fish was born and it had a random marking on its body that looked a bit like an eye (Genetic Mutation). This fish was swimming about with other fish when a predator turns up and makes an attack, the predator misses the fish with the marking because it thought it was going in the other direction but gets one of the other fish. The fish with the marking is living long enough to have offspring the other isn't. The fish with the marking gives birth to fish that look just like it with a similar marking because they look like their mother. The above repeats over and over for thousands of years and in fact the more the marking looks like an eye the better chance that fish stands and voila, over time we end up with a species of fish that looks like it has an eye at both ends as a defence mechanism.

In the case of Humans it doesn't really matter. In effect we don't evolve because we adapt our surroundings to us.  The brain evolved to the point where we made things work. If someone was born with three legs and could run at 60MPH that mutation wouldn't  create dominant new species even though they could out run predators or catch fast moving prey better because we have Cars and supermarkets  It would just be a medical complaint.


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## zozo (18 Jun 2016)

I do understand some parts of evolution and far from religious since i long ago converted myself to an agnost.. I just can't know.



AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Now in the case of our fish with the eye on the other end of the body, obviously it's not an eye it's just a marking that looks like an eye and the fish isn't even aware its got it. One day a fish was born and it had a random marking on its body that looked a bit like an eye (Genetic Mutation).



In your previous reply it didn't realy implement this view, no pun intended both statements contradict eachother. As in about every ordanary book or every ordenary documentary about evolution it is stated evolution does this because of that.. They give more credit to evolution than to the animal in question. F.e example they show people in asia working in the jungle with a mask on the back of their head with eyes painted on it to fool a tiger. And a few frames later they show that famous butterfly with 2 markings on its wings looking like a pair of eyes. And it's stated the same way as you did in the previous post, in a way that evolution did this for this particular reason.. IHMO this is nothing more than adding intrigue to the story and there for it ceases to be science. 

Why is it stated like that and what the hell do they want to make us believe. And this tiny (esoteric) detail makes me think that many books and especialy those (David Attenborough) television documentaries are not scripted by scientists but rather by salesman.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (19 Jun 2016)

Not sure what you mean mate. At what point are they contradictory? There's actually two points and both are valid. There's two things going on and they're not mutually exclusive. The brain is evolving as well as the physical appearance. 
All living creatures were born with a basic set of instructions embedded in them which guarantees a better chance of survival. Part of those are the flight and fight policy, humans have the same thing. We have a reward and survival mechanism which make us find food, breed and stay alive. The physical attributes we're stuck with, how we use them I down t instinct. The flight or fight part is a part of of brain isn't very good at making logical decisions because It doesn't have time to make those decisions, on 99% of times we will do exactly what we did the last time we were in a similar situation if that worked. Sometimes it works out sometimes not.         
In th case of a schooling fish the physical attributes that have evolved are body shape for fast moving, colour to blend or all looking th same or bright colours to look poisonous. Then the fish has its instincts, if last time there was a predator the fish survived an attack by mingling with other similar fish its brain will have made the connection that doing so can save its life.
From then on that what the fish will do without using up to much brain power. It's a combination of physical attributes an brain power. When both are in sync at works these are the species that pass on their blood line and eveolves in that direction.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (19 Jun 2016)

By the way, that was posted from phone with a massive raging red wine hangover so apologies for all the spelling mistakes  Can't seem to find the edit button, sometimes it's their and sometimes not. Not sure why.


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## zozo (19 Jun 2016)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> By the way, that was posted from phone with a massive raging red wine hangover so apologies for all the spelling mistakes  Can't seem to find the edit button, sometimes it's their and sometimes not. Not sure why.


Lol, never mind, it's a bit the same for me, without a wine hangover.. My english actualy the hangover and actualy isn't good enough to mingle into discussions like this.. Often when done posting i realize i maybe didn't use the correct words to say what i mean.. And after reading it again i guess maybe by far i didn't say what i think i've said.. And may well be what i realy said didn't make any sence at all..

Excuse me for that.. I never should have tried it in the first place..

It remembers me of one day in spain.. I also do speak some spanish and that day in spain i met a lovely girl and thought/tried to say something nice to her.. She bursted out in laughter and walked away. Till today a actualy still do not know what i realy said.. The feeling it gave me, i actualy don't want to know..


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## herezor (20 Jun 2016)

PARAGUAY said:


> I dont think fish have fear or emotions in that sense as zozo says.


I agree completely. The size of the brain of a fish is just enough for their instincts and that is all. No room for emotions or fear or love...They do not recognize their own being as a fish. They are just little machines whose purpose is to contribute to the entropy increase of the environment as all living creatures do 


alto said:


> This!
> The OP used a poor choice of words & suffered for it I suspect ...



, the OP chose the exact words he wanted to use to generate what he has generated... 



zozo said:


> And a few frames later they show that famous butterfly with 2 markings on its wings looking like a pair of eyes



This is simply chance. That effect was what worked. The other butterflies with other markings were eaten so their genes coding for those markings did not survive. That particular pattern may have an effect on predators we do not know for sure. Remember that we see the visible spectrum, but other animals see UV etc...

Anyway, what I intended with this post was to check if there was people thinking that fish have emotions, feelings or even fear. I am a believer that most simple animals do not. I am not talking about elephants, monkeys, etc. Mice, fish, daphnia, shrimp... those animals have a brain that contains only a few neurons just to control their physical needs (breath, heart pump, muscle contraction, etc) and very very very very few to control their senses for survival (smell, sight, etc). So, to those people who say "would you like to be kept in a tank full of dirt, well, sure not and fish neither" must think twice that comparison as it is a big nonsense.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Jun 2016)

zozo said:


> It remembers me of one day in spain.. I also do speak some spanish and that day in spain i met a lovely girl and thought/tried to say something nice to her.. She bursted out in laughter and walked away. Till today a actualy still do not know what i realy said.. The feeling it gave me, i actualy don't want to know..



Haha, no worries brother. Reminds me of a similar situation with my neighbour, she's Polish and lived in the South of England before moving up North where there's a strong regional dialect often hard to understand even for English people. Round our way we call a little girl a "La'rl Lass" She has a young daughter with white hair and friendly people in the street would comment saying "what a lovely la'rl lass." She came back from the town centre one day totally distraught thinking people had been stopping her in the street and saying she had a lovely ass 

I'm into a bit of amateur psychology, humans although they think are unpredictable are actually quite predictable creatures. The flight and fight mechanism is something all living creatures share. There was an experiment where 6 people were put in a room and given information about a bomb that has been planted and three terrorist groups were suspected. They all had to agree on who to retaliate against and given some evidence but had to respond quickly. Even though all evidence pointed to not being the group they picked 5 out of the 6 people still picked that group. They all went with a terrorist group that they knew had done this before. The mechanism doesn't have time to process the information so it reverts to what happened last time and how that panned out. Same with fish, at some point the fish has instinctively merged with a group which saved it's bacon one day and it quickly learned schooling is a good way of protecting itself. Lions and big cats etc will make the same decision, they will look for a straggler so they can focus their attack. It's harder to focus on a potential victim when there are loads of them running about in front of you. The stragglers get picked off and don't pass their poor instinct on to their young. Without doubt animals will make other judgements involving thought process. For instance when a lion has made a kill possible prey will quite happily ignore the lions because they know they are not hungry. 

This is similar to my shrimp, first reaction is get away then after they've had time to digest the information they now think it's good to hang around the corys.


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## zozo (20 Jun 2016)

I give you credit and respect for  choosing the word believe.. 
Be carefull with that, as history already thaught us, believe can be a dangerous phenomenon.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Jun 2016)

herezor said:


> Anyway, what I intended with this post was to check if there was people thinking that fish have emotions, feelings or even fear



That's a hard one to get with one brush stroke. What is fear? To us we can describe that emotion, connect it with a reason and make a word that people can empathise with. Basically though its just a reaction in the brain and maybe the stomach giving you a feeling of impending doom. I'm sure fish must have some physical reaction going on inside their tiny brains that triggers a response otherwise I'm not sure how the fish would translate a bad situation into forcing a physical reaction to it.

Pain is another one, pain can be switched off as we often do with paracetamol etc. The underlying cause is still there just the receptors in the brain aren't getting the message. I feel sure that fear and pain are two things built into a fish DNA otherwise it would have no trigger to defend or save itself.

Don't know about love, what about shrimp pining, running round looking for their partners after you move some out or Discus partnering for life? It's complicated I guess. Fish not looking their best or discoloured when they are not in favourable conditions. That's not the fishes way of telling us, it's the fishes way of displaying an emotion that it's not happy then we interpret that.

It's hard to weigh up what ranges of emotions fish can deal with. I'm sure they have a few physical triggers that are the equivalent of human ones just they don't mean the same as they do to us. They say being in love has the same physical effects as having flu just we interpret that physical "feeling" depending on our situation.


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## alto (20 Jun 2016)

It's extremely difficult to measure intelligence in animals - look at older study models vs much newer techniques  ...
Fish easily recognise/respond to different colors, they recognise related/unrelated fish within a group, have preferred "friends" within a group, recognize/distinguish between humans ...


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## AverageWhiteBloke (20 Jun 2016)

I don't think we give them as much credit as they deserve. Even the simplest of creatures is a very complex thing.


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## herezor (24 Jun 2016)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> I don't think we give them as much credit as they deserve. Even the simplest of creatures is a very complex thing.



I am very much on the opposite side. I think we give them much more credit than they deserve. They are just fish. They have my credit because they have been on Earth millions of years before us, but that is all


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## pablo (24 Jun 2016)

Shock horror: Pro aquascapers scare their fish to force schooling before a photo. Cruelty to animals or necessary evil to win an aquascaping competition?

I think fish in nature may exibit this schooling behaviour several times daily, when bigger fish move by. In our tanks (predominantly well planted and healthy here on UKAPS) schooling fish are overly calm due to the lack of predators, abundance of cover and steady flow of food. They often want for nothing and we may overprotect them a little.......... because we love them of course!

I think having bigger fish triggering schooling behaviour would be very natural, but it's likely that the schooling fish will just get used to the bigger fish and mostly stop schooling after a while.If they were being predated upon though this would be a different story.


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## scootamum (30 Jun 2016)

zozo said:


> This statement in particular is where i fall off my chair and is completely out of my grasp.. Even if it has millions of years evolution, fast or slow then still it must be a rather very intelligent process making that decision to grow in a deceptive form or color the fool a predator.. The most striking animals on this planet when it comes to that are among other the Phyllium Giganteum.. Behavior ok this i can grasp, but looks not so very much.
> 
> In the end for me i rather believe it's just a nice theory to give some more intrigue to the story, since no human ever witnesed any form of evolution like this, we are much to short on this planet for that. If it is not just chance and incidentaly fooling predators there must be something in animals and maybe even plants going on of which we are very reluctand to give credit to for what ever reason.
> 
> ...


 
Not fish I know, but this article on Wikipedia about the Peppered Moth may help you get your head around it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution


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## dw1305 (30 Jun 2016)

Hi all, 





scootamum said:


> Peppered Moth may help you get your head around it


 I've had a small involvement with the on-going research at Liverpool University on <"industrial melanism in Peppered Moth (_Biston betularia_)">.

If people want a more accessible read then Jerry Coyne's pages are (generally) really good. <"Why Evolution is True: the peppered moth">. You might also like his <"books">. 

Michael Majerus was working on <"Peppered Moths"> before his untimely death.

Neil Shubin's <"Your Inner Fish...."> is also a good read, but slightly more technical.

cheers Darrel


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## zozo (30 Jun 2016)

scootamum said:


> Not fish I know, but this article on Wikipedia about the Peppered Moth may help you get your head around it.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution



I can get my head around color changes for camouflage, in colors like black. green, pepepred or any other random variety of colors and many animals do. I have a few fish in my tank (Hara Jerdoni) doing that, also peppered in a variety of colors.  Since there is visuel input then if the animal tries to blend in to that. Still a very remarkable sophisticated property for such eledged rather stupid small brained animals doing that instinctively . But when it comes to what regular scientists also state about intelligence and brain size etc, then it's rather contraditive to state that animals take very complex color paterns as defensive strategy, like stripes, or even more complex a patern in a shape of an eye. Even some kinds of plants are decorated with such defensive properties in the way they grow or look.

Tho already proven that trees take defensive measures with the help of communicating to eachother over vast distances. So if plantlive already communicates without having detectable brain tissue.. So who the hell are we to give measures to intelligence and brainsize and question animal abilities for having emotions.

I guess ingnorance rather is an average human instinctive defensive strategy. And not a particulary smart one too. 

Another nice example is, with natural catastrophes like that last tsunami where reportedly very little wildlife got killed. Remarkable isn't it, something that only occurs once in a few centuries and still all wildlife detects it and goes to higher grounds before it hits.. They probably hear or feel something they associate with danger and flee..


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