Could you tell one fish from another if they were the same species? Likely not, but new research suggests they might be able to tell us apart.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Could you tell this fish from this one?
00:05Or these two from one another?
00:06Likely not.
00:07But new research suggests they might be able to tell us apart.
00:11Experts say that while we often reserve that kind of familiarity with dogs and cats that
00:14live in our homes, wild fish can also tell us apart.
00:17Researchers trained wild saddled sea bream and black sea bream to follow experimenters
00:21who provided food to them for 12 days.
00:23After that, the trainer was joined by another researcher who dressed either identically
00:27or different for each trial.
00:29The researchers found that when dressed the same, the fish would follow both of them,
00:32with one of the species slightly preferring the trainer.
00:34However, when they dressed differently, the fish overwhelmingly followed the one dressed
00:38as the trainer.
00:39With the researchers saying about it, they are just using simple mechanisms that they
00:42use every day in their lives, and they adapt it to recognize humans.
00:46The researchers say that because they are wild animals, they likely had no prior experience
00:50with humans, showcasing their innate color and pattern recognition abilities.