Sorry but I cant copyright entire journal articles due to copyright. They are references not links.But I wont argue anymore as I believe that learning and adapting are evidence of making decisions, and that the evidence does point to fish feeling stress and fear - both of which are emotional and physiological. This has been found using the same hormonal evidence that is used for any other animal. Look I am not saying dont eat fish. But using excuses that have been scientifically disproved leads other people to get the wrong opinion. Animal behaviour, stress and welfare is my field so I am not just an overemotive person trying to humanise an animal. There are facts and there are myths. And I was pointing out scientific fact.
This is totally random, as i just came across this when i was pottering about...
When i was 20 we had goldfish. We kept them in an aquarium. We got 2 and then about 8 months later we got 3 more. We had the 5 for about a year or so i think. But the original 2 (they were all different enough you could tell them apart) ALWAYS hung out together. It was a joke actually as whenever we tried to get them out to clean the tank (not very often, it was filtered, but you still sometimes have to give it a big clean) you couldn't net one without the other because they stuck together like glue.
Anyway one night one of the pair jumped out of the tank and we found it dead on the floor. The other one never ate again. It died about a month later. It just mooched about the bottom of the tank getting thinner and thinner and then died.
I don't know everything (or anything much even) about fish and it could be that some sort of illness made the first one go mad and the other one stop eating, but the other 3 were fine and lived another year or more before we gave them to a friend. I don't know about brains, and it could well be that i'm ascribing emotions to the fish because i have emotions myself, but to me it looked like that little fish just pined to death.
I eat fish BTW. I eat all meat in fact. So them having emotions or not doesn't affect my morality or any "cause". I tend to assume that all creatures have the same worth as me, cosmically speaking, whatever they seem to do/think/feel.
That's so random! I never noticed such things when I had goldfish, though I definately did with budgies and rats (especially rats, gorgeous girls they were).
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