This fish has worked out it can smoke as many cigarettes as it likes, without the risk of lung cancer.....now that is smart!
Most Intelligent Thing You've Seen a Fish Do?
- Thread starter spitz006
- Start date
I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever seen my fish do anything truly smart. Obviously I’ve had the whole begging for food and recognizing me over anyone else bit.
Just about everything seems more like instinct to me but here goes:
After my pacu cleaned out most of the tank, one silver dollar knew to swim with them and pretend it was a pacu.
Mbuna knowing to wait until crayfish molted before attacking (and went for the claws first). They waved them in front of its legless body just to taunt the poor thing.
I’m pretty sure my banded leporinus is responsible for my piranha’s death. The running theory is that it got scared and smashed his head into the wall. What else to scare it but a bite in the tail by a Leporinus. Almost 100% by chance, but if it knew what it was doing…smartest dang fish I’ve seen.
Just about everything seems more like instinct to me but here goes:
After my pacu cleaned out most of the tank, one silver dollar knew to swim with them and pretend it was a pacu.
Mbuna knowing to wait until crayfish molted before attacking (and went for the claws first). They waved them in front of its legless body just to taunt the poor thing.
I’m pretty sure my banded leporinus is responsible for my piranha’s death. The running theory is that it got scared and smashed his head into the wall. What else to scare it but a bite in the tail by a Leporinus. Almost 100% by chance, but if it knew what it was doing…smartest dang fish I’ve seen.
I agree; the stuff that we automatically attribute to "intelligence" is almost always simple instinct.
Bees build gigantic hives consisting of absolutely perfect hexagonal cells fitted into a uniform matrix. Is that intelligence?
None of us reading this could duplicate that feat without the use of several different tools. Is that lack of intelligence?
Don't even get me started on people who have a special "bond" with their fish, and who "love" their fish, and are convinced their fish "love" them back...
Bees build gigantic hives consisting of absolutely perfect hexagonal cells fitted into a uniform matrix. Is that intelligence?
None of us reading this could duplicate that feat without the use of several different tools. Is that lack of intelligence?
Don't even get me started on people who have a special "bond" with their fish, and who "love" their fish, and are convinced their fish "love" them back...
I thought I already answered this one, but I guess it's a new one so I'll say it again
My gold amazonarum have so far been the smartest fish I've ever had.
I got them a little before I moved to my current house, so I had to net them out to move their tank. I noticed they'd eat floating food at the surface, so I used floating food to bait them to the top before netting them out. From then on they'd take floating food to the bottom before eating it.
When they had fry, they'd dig a pit for the fry, and in an attempt to raise the fry, I'd pull them as wrigglers. The pair caught on that I would pull the wrigglers from the pit, so on one of the spawns they dug multiple pits, distributed the fry randomly throughout a few of them, leaving some empty, so I wouldn't know where all of the fry were, or at least if I knew where some were, I wouldn't be able to get all of them.
Before spawning, I'd condition them with frozen food, and a few days before laying eggs they'd spit some of the food out onto a rock. This, over the next few days, would grow some sort of weird algae, which they'd herd the fry to to graze on once they became free swimming.
My male died years ago, but my female still shows some feats of intelligence. Her tank is kind of a thunderdome, so a lot of random fish come and go in and out. She's learned that when the lid comes off the tank, the net is coming in, but she also seems to realize that the net never comes for her, so she just sits under her log and waits for me to do my thing.
My gold amazonarum have so far been the smartest fish I've ever had.
I got them a little before I moved to my current house, so I had to net them out to move their tank. I noticed they'd eat floating food at the surface, so I used floating food to bait them to the top before netting them out. From then on they'd take floating food to the bottom before eating it.
When they had fry, they'd dig a pit for the fry, and in an attempt to raise the fry, I'd pull them as wrigglers. The pair caught on that I would pull the wrigglers from the pit, so on one of the spawns they dug multiple pits, distributed the fry randomly throughout a few of them, leaving some empty, so I wouldn't know where all of the fry were, or at least if I knew where some were, I wouldn't be able to get all of them.
Before spawning, I'd condition them with frozen food, and a few days before laying eggs they'd spit some of the food out onto a rock. This, over the next few days, would grow some sort of weird algae, which they'd herd the fry to to graze on once they became free swimming.
My male died years ago, but my female still shows some feats of intelligence. Her tank is kind of a thunderdome, so a lot of random fish come and go in and out. She's learned that when the lid comes off the tank, the net is coming in, but she also seems to realize that the net never comes for her, so she just sits under her log and waits for me to do my thing.
I've got too many experiences to count with my fish but here are some examples.
My oscar plays basketball every day. If I don't feed him first he comes up and slaps water with his lips. He does silly things for amusement when the camera is on (headstanding, floating sideways, loop-de-loops). He also blocks fish into hides when they annoy him using boulders and plants. If I don't visit the fishroom for a day he launches his ball out of the tank. If Brick is angry he slams the ball like stress relief (usually when I move stuff around). He got pissed at severum Corn who hid in a log after pecking Brick's tail. Brick turned the log over to force the severum out.
My parrot Tango piled rocks around a syno to keep him blocked behind the filter. It worked. I had to dig the syno out.
My parrot Boss is a tactical genius. If he loses a fight he figures out how to beat an opponent and wins the second time around. Once he got speared by one of the synos. He discovered by slamming the catfish head on he could keep the cat from spearing him. Basically just jackhammered the syno into submission by the head into the sand. They got along after that. Same thing with the oscar. Once Brick got too big and massive to lock lips with Boss switched to head butting. It works...Brick hates it to this day.
My hrp female Pip and female rainbow Pepper had a 'co-op' of raising fry. Pepper could use the shared log as long as she helped watching Pip's fry.
My bp Patch would gulp air, swim across the surface, blow the air out and catch bubbles on the other side. She also liked to slide down the glass walls for fun.
My bp Kong goes through phases of banging the glass lids open. Patch did that too. They never got concussions to my amazement. I could hear the noise in the next room.
My oscar plays basketball every day. If I don't feed him first he comes up and slaps water with his lips. He does silly things for amusement when the camera is on (headstanding, floating sideways, loop-de-loops). He also blocks fish into hides when they annoy him using boulders and plants. If I don't visit the fishroom for a day he launches his ball out of the tank. If Brick is angry he slams the ball like stress relief (usually when I move stuff around). He got pissed at severum Corn who hid in a log after pecking Brick's tail. Brick turned the log over to force the severum out.
My parrot Tango piled rocks around a syno to keep him blocked behind the filter. It worked. I had to dig the syno out.
My parrot Boss is a tactical genius. If he loses a fight he figures out how to beat an opponent and wins the second time around. Once he got speared by one of the synos. He discovered by slamming the catfish head on he could keep the cat from spearing him. Basically just jackhammered the syno into submission by the head into the sand. They got along after that. Same thing with the oscar. Once Brick got too big and massive to lock lips with Boss switched to head butting. It works...Brick hates it to this day.
My hrp female Pip and female rainbow Pepper had a 'co-op' of raising fry. Pepper could use the shared log as long as she helped watching Pip's fry.
My bp Patch would gulp air, swim across the surface, blow the air out and catch bubbles on the other side. She also liked to slide down the glass walls for fun.
My bp Kong goes through phases of banging the glass lids open. Patch did that too. They never got concussions to my amazement. I could hear the noise in the next room.
I have had my proteus pike cichlid move a heater to the front of a cave system it had made and it was the only fish that could then fit in the cave system next day I stuck the heater guard with heater back on the aquarium glass that night it managed to disloge the heater and put it back at the entrance of the cave so I decided to leave it be.
I don’t know if I call it intelligence or just ‘recognizing’ but we all have heard stories of how a fish will respond to those that feed it and will ignore all others but here is a story with a bit of a twist.
My old pearsei that is my avatar pic got very sick and started to waste away. At this point I decided to do a force feed method of feeding a medicated food. This involved catching the fish daily and using a baby medicine syringe with a length of tubing attached to pump the medicated food down its throat. Holding the , at the time, 12”+ fish in a wet towel and doing this was quite a challenge, but it paid off and the fish recovered and grew up to 16” and was with me a good 10 years total.
Here is where the story gets interesting. After going through this treatment process for over two weeks, the fish started acting different. Every time I approached the tank it would swim to the back and hide. It would not eat in front of me either. I would walk out of the room and peek around the corner and saw it come out to eat…interesting. Time for a test, sent the wife in and the pearsei would interact with her, not hide and eat in front of her. lol, the fish associated me with a traumatic experience and stopped responding to me. This only lasted about two weeks but I always wondered if it were intelligent behavior, holding a grudge or just simple facial recognition and association with trauma.
My old pearsei that is my avatar pic got very sick and started to waste away. At this point I decided to do a force feed method of feeding a medicated food. This involved catching the fish daily and using a baby medicine syringe with a length of tubing attached to pump the medicated food down its throat. Holding the , at the time, 12”+ fish in a wet towel and doing this was quite a challenge, but it paid off and the fish recovered and grew up to 16” and was with me a good 10 years total.
Here is where the story gets interesting. After going through this treatment process for over two weeks, the fish started acting different. Every time I approached the tank it would swim to the back and hide. It would not eat in front of me either. I would walk out of the room and peek around the corner and saw it come out to eat…interesting. Time for a test, sent the wife in and the pearsei would interact with her, not hide and eat in front of her. lol, the fish associated me with a traumatic experience and stopped responding to me. This only lasted about two weeks but I always wondered if it were intelligent behavior, holding a grudge or just simple facial recognition and association with trauma.
Cincelichthys sp. "PTSD"
Came back to add that while it wasn't necessarily intelligence, my male Rio bagaces convict absolutely hated his thermometer. I'd put it up on the glass, within minutes he would not only rip it off the glass, but completely bury it in the sand. Not sure what that was about. This happened 3-4 times before I gave up.
I noticed the nicoya convicts in general seemed to have an inherent grudge against tetras. Perhaps their naturally/abnormally large size is an adaptation against astyanax in their native range. They didn't touch mollies or black skirts, but my male threw half a school of buenos aires out of his tank within days of being in there, and the female ate half of another school in another tank.