Fish collaborate with other species and make rational choices about when and with whom to do so. This amazing behaviour was demonstrated in an experiment at the Australian Museum’s Lizard Island Research Station by Alex Vail, Andrea Manica and Redouan Bshary. The results have been published here in Current Biology. See also Nature.
The experiment involved the unlikely pairing of a coral trout Plectropomus leopardus with a life-like image of a moray eel. The decisions made by the trout in eliciting the moray’s help to capture prey were a revelation. Previously it was thought that chimpanzees were the only non-human species capable of determining with whom to elicit cooperation and when it was necessary.
Alex Vail is the son of Station directors Anne Hoggett and Lyle Vail. He spent his childhood on Lizard Island and has just completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is currently working as a freelance underwater cameraman, contracted by the BBC Natural History Unit on their landmark series Oceans. See Alex Vail’s showreel – 2015.
Peter Sale has written a wonderful article providing context for all this, with a PDF link to the full text of the Current Biology paper. Peter cites Marshall McLuhan: If I had not believed it, I would never have seen it.
Fascinated by all this of Alex’s. We have gold fish in our fish pond where we live. Do we know if fish can sleep? We have one who looks as if he is asleep most of the time. He certainly wakes for feeding time.
With best wishes,
Ken.
Hi Ken, sorry for the late reply. “Do fish sleep” is actually quite a tricky question with a complex answer. If you would like to have a read of an explanation, check out this Australian Museum article on it: http://australianmuseum.net.au/do-fishes-sleep. Thanks for the question!
Wonderful to see this very interesting research published and mentioned in Nature. The reference by Frans de Waal is most apposite. Humans have had an arrogant view of unique intelligence and collaboration for too long. Good wishes Alex.
Hello I am so glad I found your blog, I really found you by adnecict, while I was researching on Digg for something else, Nonetheless I am here now and would just like to say thanks a lot for a fantastic post and a all round entertaining blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to read through it all at the minute but I have saved it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read more, Please do keep up the fantastic work.