6
May
Basketball-Playing, Limbo-Dancing Fish: Proof of Intelligence
- posted at 11:06 AM
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If you needed any more proof that fish are smart, sensitive creatures that deserve more than being battered or stuck in a glass bowl – meet Comet. He plays football, basketball, rugby, limbo dances and more. Now before you start thinking, “Oh that’s soooo cute, I want one. Isn’t Comet amazing?” take the blinkers off and also think about these fun facts:
Fish are, by nature, intelligent beings. Comet is pretty darn amazing but so are all the other fish out there. So don’t go thinking he’s one of a kind.
If fish are proven to be this clever, do they really deserve to be doomed to a 10×10 bowl for the rest of their lives, merely to amuse us impressionable humans? A fish tank is a glass prison – what’s the crime?
Don’t even get me started on fish as food. If you eat fish, the story about Comet’s ‘tricks’ should serve as a good basis to, well… stop eating them. Would you eat your dog? ‘Cause dogs do some neat ‘tricks’ too.
The first thing I thought when I read about this on the news is what the fish must have endured to learn these tricks. As smart as Comet is, playing sports and dancing is not his natural behavior. Most likely the owner starved him and only gave him food when doing the tricks right (the training technique is based on “Operant Conditioning” that typically uses reinforcement and punishment as core tools).
Now a company named R2 Lights is making money selling their training kid on Amazon.com. This must stop.