[PenultimateManStanding]

Sometimes when I take a substitute teaching assignment I have little to do beyond taking roll and regulating the use of the hall pass. Today covering a History teacher's class was just like that and he had a good collection of books in the room. So I selected the Austrian Ethologist and Naturalist Konrad Lorenz' King Soloman's Ring, a book about the behavior and intelligence, or mental skills, of animals. Terrific little book. There was a lot about the communication skills of dogs and birds. In his chapter on dogs, he noted that a lot of modern dogs are descended from the jackal, not the wolf. I found this speculation to be interesting: the jackal would not attempt to hunt big game on its own; it learned that after following humans it could get a taste of the big game. And eventually 'figured out' that with the assistance of humans, it could get even more of the big game if it led the humans on the trail rather than followed; i.e. the jackal became a hunting dog in a symbiotic relationship with early humans. Lorenz also discovered that he could fool mallard ducklings into thinking he was their mother by getting low to the ground and making the appropriate quacking sounds. If he stood up it didn't work and the ducklings would soon make plaintive noises like they lost their mommy. Same if he paused in making the quacking noises for more than a couple of minutes. So he's out in the back yard low to the ground making quacking sounds as the little ducklings were waddling behind him through some tall grass. Some people walk by and look over the fence and see a fully grown man crouching and making quacking sounds without seeing that he's actually being followed by a bunch of little ducklings. With that and a few other tales he makes the point that he's lucky he never got taken to a psychiatric hospital. In fact, he won the Nobel Prize. So here's the deal with the fish tales: an early chapter on aquariums and fish detailed some amazing observations about fish behavior and their care for their young including this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') once saw a jewel fish, during such an evening transport of strayed children, perform a deed which absolutely astonished me. I came late one evening into the laboratory. It was already dusk and I finished hurriedly to feed a few fishes which had not received anything to eat that day; amongst them was a pair of jewel fishes who were tending their young. As I approached the container, I saw that most of the young were already in the nesting hollow over which the mother was hovering. She refused to come for the food when I threw pieces of earthworm into the tank. The father, however, who in great excitement was dashing backwards and forwards searching for the truants, allowed himself to be diverted from his duty by a nice hind-end of earthworm . . . He swam up and siezed the worm, but owing to its size was unable to swallow it. As he was now in the act of chewing this mouthful, he saw a baby fish swimming by itself across the tank; he started as though stung, raced after the baby and took it into his already filled mouth. It was a thrilling moment. The fish had in its mouth two different things of which one must go into its stomach and one into the nest. What would he do? I must confess that at that moment I would not have given twopence for the life of that tiny jewel fish. But wonderful what really happened! The fish stood stock still with puffed cheeks, but did not chew. If ever I have seen a fish think, it was in that moment! What a truly remarkable thing that a fish can find itself in a genuine conflicting situation and, in this case, behave exactly as a human being would; that is to say, it stops, blocked in all directions, and can go neither forward nor backward. For many seconds, the father jewel fish stood riveted and one could almost see how his feelings were working. Then he solved the conflict in a way for which one can only feel admiration: he spit out the whole contents of his mouth: the worm fell to the bottom, and the little jewel fish, becoming heavy in the way I described above, did the same. Then the father turned resolutely to the worm and ate it up, without haste but all the time with one eye on the child which 'obediently' lay on the bottom beneath him. When he had finished, he inhaled tha baby and carried it home to its mother.
Some students, who had witnessed the whole scene, started as one man to applaud.

[EnergySpin]

All being process information. Sounds like typical human father behaviour.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Drop the kid and grab a beer?

[rogerhb]

I think therefore I fish....

[PenultimateManStanding]

Also in that chapter was a discussion of designing aquariums which require no aeration or food input. Just a complete little ecosystem. The eerie thing to me as I was reading it was when he talked about how you could get one of these kinds of aquariums going only to have it fall apart in death by adding just one fish too many which depleted the oxygen and started a deadly chain -reaction degeneration. (there's your PO tie-in for you)

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A')lso in that chapter was a discussion of designing aquariums which require no aeration or food input. Just a complete little ecosystem. The eerie thing to me as I was reading it was when he talked about how you could get one of these kinds of aquariums going only to have it fall apart in death by adding just one fish too many which depleted the oxygen and started a deadly chain -reaction degeneration. (there's your PO tie-in for you)

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')the aquarium example shows that natural+biological cycles are capable of perfect recycling. Add energy input and things get interesting ...

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')the aquarium example shows that natural+biological cycles are capable of perfect recycling. Add energy input and things get interesting ...

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
') therefore life will not go extinct (human life is a different story).

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
') therefore life will not go extinct (human life is a different story).

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Common PMS we are all going to die PO or not PO.

[Specop_007]

I'm skeptical this is a sign of fish thinking.....

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'I')'m skeptical this is a sign of fish thinking.....

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', '
')Common PMS we are all going to die PO or not PO.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'I')'m skeptical this is a sign of fish thinking.....

[Aaron]

I bet we wouldn't be so casual about killing fish if we knew they could think...

Unless of course, we knew they we're thinking about how to kill us.

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'I')'m skeptical this is a sign of fish thinking.....

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'I') bet we wouldn't be so casual about killing fish if we knew they could think...

Unless of course, we knew they we're thinking about how to kill us.

[EnergySpin]

Why do you guys think that fish have a symbolic program (like specop does).
There is nothing of that sort in their "brain". Just cells and electrical currents that jump from one cell to the other.
In fact that kind of symbolic thinking that Specop proposes, only appears in higher mammals

[PenultimateManStanding]

I think that Lorenz chose the way he wanted to tell his story very shrewdly: the fish hesitates for seconds and does nothing he tells us. If the fish had instinctual programming to govern the situation then it wouldn't have hesitated. In fact, that it was two conflicting sets of programming that got it into a fix that wasn't covered by instinct seems to be a very valid interpretation here. So the little fish brain had to stop and think about it!