Dumb fish?

[Gershom]

One thing I (and many others) like about some of the cichlids is what we tend to call personality.
It seems to me that it is a product of intelligence; they seem smarter than lots of fish, such as dither fish.

I have several young motaguense and was watching their purposeful behavior and comparing it with the apparently aimless darting around of tiger barbs. Or the mindless glass bumping, or up and down behavior of some fish—I greatly prefer smart fish; intelligent activity.

But the next morning I saw the motaguense doing the dumb glass bumping! It occurred to me that they were hungry, so I fed them, and they went back to routine. So maybe I have been misjudging fish behaviors as dumb, when it really means something, like seeking an unmet need…

(But that doesn’t mean cichlids aren’t smarter—there is other evidence, such as recognizing specific people). I used to have red devil (Killer 2), who seemed to like to be petted.

 

[krichardson]

I don't have any cichlids currently but some of my datnoids act a bit dumb sometimes.

 

[esoxlucius]

I don't know about fish being smart but who's to say that they don't look out at us from their glass boxes and think exactly the same about their keepers!!

After all, the fact remains that there are a lot of dumb owners out there!

 

[tlindsey]

I don't know about fish being smart but who's to say that they don't look out at us from their glass boxes and think exactly the same about their keepers!!

After all, the fact remains that there are a lot of dumb owners out there!

Yes true I had all kinds of fish look at me as if I was dumb.

 

[jjohnwm]

I've always ranked the intelligence of fish based upon how easy or difficult they are to capture in a net to remove from their tanks. Right or wrong, this seems like a fairly pragmatic approach for an aquarist. Now, of course, any fish can be caught with very little drama by simply waiting for the next water change, and then deftly scooping it up as it lays almost on its side at the bottom in an inch or two of water...but most aquarists today seem to spend most of their time concocting more and more exotic and complex plans to avoid changing their water, so it's time for the net.

Cichlids, when measured by this yardstick, are pretty smart, i.e. they are among the most difficult fish to capture in a tank without much cursing and decor-moving and water-clouding. The easiest way to get them out is to wait until they retreat into a piece of pipe or flowerpot or whatever, and then to completely cover the opening to that object and lift it to the surface, forcing the offending fish into the net as the object is being actually lifted from the water. What a PITA! If you, like me, have large pieces of driftwood that are being held down by means of rocks or other weights, you can count on all that artfully-arranged rockwork to be thrown askew, allowing the wood to bob up like a crippled WW2 submarine. More mess. Ugh.

It's too bad that cichlids are, in addition to being smart, also usually arrogant, pushy, aggressive, domineering anti-social jerks who just can't get along with others. Many of them are known to grudgingly accept tankmates for a time..."I've had them living together for almost a month and they're fine! "...only to wake up one day and just snap. As Dr. No said to James Bond: "The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be." If you change the word "psychotic" for "criminal" in that sentence...you have cichlids.

At the opposite extreme are the imbeciles of the fish world...many of the small schooling/shoaling fish whose principle act of genius is to follow each other around in the water. They are so stupid that they hope by forming large groupings that they might assemble one single hive-mind...but it never works. A densely-planted tank full of, say, Rosy Reds, can be completely emptied of all of them without so much as disturbing a plant leaf or nudging a pebble. All it takes is two nets, carefully and slowly maneuvered so as to corral the fish in numbers in open water. They stay in open water because they're stupid; and they're so stupid that they quickly forget that there's a threat and will be back out in the open water a few minutes after the previous swoop of the net. When you get down to the last few, it's almost pathetic; they can't find enough buddies to hide behind each other, so they adopt a deer-in-the-headlights look and practically dive into the net. Idiots.

Most fish fall somewhere in between those extremes. So do most aquarists. {sigh...}

 

[Gershom]

I've always ranked the intelligence of fish based upon how easy or difficult they are to capture in a net to remove from their tanks.”

That isn’t a bad idea, but there are many types of intelligence and it isn’t reasonable to use just one.
Gersh

“…many of the small schooling/shoaling fish whose principle act of genius is to follow each other around…”

That sheep-like behavior reminds me of most people! Embarrassing for the species.
Gersh

 

[Conchonius]

I think a measure of d-baggery is inevitable with smart animals. Intelligence becomes necessary in social species that have long-term fights over hierarchy, even peaceful brainiacs like gorillas, elephants, crows and rats enforce a social order. You must remember the pecking order, your alliances, the status of potential mates and rivals, changes in territory, who won (or lost) a fight recently, who died, who got sick, whose daughter ran off with a handsome beau from the next tribe over... there's so much gossip that you need a good brain to keep track of it all.

By the same token, it's no surprise that cichlids, larger cyprinids, and reef fish win top prizes when it comes to smarts... and all three groups can be complete jerks that fight each other (and their keepers) at the drop of a hat. Mormyrids are less aggressive but make up for it in volume of communication, due to their electric organs they're constantly in contact with others of their kind. In contrast, schooling fish live in groups but do not interact with each other beyond simple swarm rules, so they have less of a need to develop a long-term memory and social deduction skills.

I don't keep cichlids, but the smartest of my fish is the rainbow shark, a quarrelsome animal that stakes out a territory (although instead of mating, this is to be its feeding grounds) and defends it viciously against others... or at least the that's the theory, but mine turned out to be a total sweetheart. Nary a fin nipped or cory stifled in the night, and even when pushed by the striped raphael with no sense of personal boundaries, the worst it'll do is mock charging and returning to its perch.

 

[Gershom]

I think a measure of d-baggery is inevitable with smart animals. Intelligence becomes necessary in social species that have long-term fights over hierarchy, even peaceful brainiacs like gorillas, elephants, crows and rats enforce a social order. You must remember the pecking order, your alliances, the status of potential mates and rivals, changes in territory, who won (or lost) a fight recently, who died, who got sick, whose daughter ran off with a handsome beau from the next tribe over... there's so much gossip that you need a good brain to keep track of it

I like your analysis of animal behavior!
Recently I re-read “The Life of Pi”, and was struck by the (his?) extensive interpretation of different animal behaviors. For one thing, he said zoo animals are very content in a well-run cage or pen. Not only do they not aspire to the wild, but they often reject the opportunity. They are focused on food, sex, safety, and the familiar/known; not necessarily in that order. He said a tiger in the wild needs a large territory, mostly for hunting, but if given daily food, they DON’T want that much—just enough for safety from neighbors.

I think a lot of his ideas are directly applicable to fish.