Associate Professor Culum Brown, Editor of the journal Animal Behaviour and Director of Advanced Biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia recently wrote about a group of animals that “…have very good memories, live in complex social communities where they keep track of individuals and can learn from one another; a process that leads to the development of stable cultural traditions. They recognise themselves and others. They cooperate with one another and show signs of Machiavellian intelligence such as cooperation and reconciliation. They build complex structures, are capable of tool use and use the same methods for keeping track of quantities as we do. For the most part, their primary senses are just as good, and in many cases better, than our own”.
Can you picture them? Try and picture those animals… would it surprise you if I told you Professor Culum is describing fish? In this ground-breaking study published in the journal Animal Cognition, Professor Culum describes how the evidence that fish feel pain (in a way similar to humans) is mounting and that the level of cognitive complexity displayed by fish is similar to that of most other vertebrates. He argues that there are compelling reasons to include fish in our ‘‘moral circle’’ and afford them the protection they deserve.
There is little public concern about the welfare of fish as many people tend to think of them just as pets or food and do not give them credit for being conscious and intelligent. Some people who give up eating meat and poultry continue to eat fish in the belief that fishing is less cruel and environmentally destructive than farming. Nothing could be further from the truth…
Read more about Viva!’s fish campaigns here…
