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As more species are admitted to the ‘smart’ animal club, fish can be overlooked. While some Sagittarius could do that Recognized images of human faces generated by the computer In a series of laboratory experiments there is not much scientific evidence about how well fishing people can recognize people who dive into their aqueous world.
However, some fish fell on a team of scientists at a research station in the Mediterranean Sea. Every field season would appear a local marine life and follow a team of scientific divers. The fish would steal the food that the divers wore as experimental rewards. The team suspected that the animals could recognize the specific diver who had previously worn the food, because this fish only followed that person while ignoring the others.
After designing a series of tests, the team discovered that some fish can tell people apart based on some of their diving equipment. The findings are detailed in one Study published on February 18 in the magazine Biology Letters.
Follow the leader
To test their premonition, the team of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior has carried out a series of experiments in Germany to see if wild fishing to tell people apart. The study was conducted in approximately 26.2 Feet of water at a research location in the Mediterranean Sea. Here populations of wild fish have become used to people. According to study co-author and Max Planck student Katinka SollerThe fish were: “Prepared volunteers who could come and go the way they wanted.”
Training was the first experimental phase. The team tested whether the fish could learn to follow Soller. She started by trying to attract the attention of the local fish Wear a bright red cardigan and swim about 164 feet. Over time, Soller removed the instructions that marked her until she swam in a normal diving equipment, hidden the food and only fed fish after they followed her for the full 164 feet.
Wild fish took part as willing volunteers in the study. Many stood up every day for experimental tests, and scientists could recognize some fish by physical characteristics. Credit: Tomaseek, Soller, Jordan (2025) Biology letters.
Of the dozens of fish species near the Marine Station, two types of sea bream were the most willing to participate in these training sessions. ZeeBrasem is sold on fish markets around the world and surprises the team with their curiosity and willingness to learn.
“Once I entered the water, it was a matter of seconds before I would see them swim towards me, apparently out of nowhere,” Soller said.
The same individual fish also showed up day after day to participate in the lessons. Soller also gave a few of them names.
“There was Bernie with two shiny silver scales on the back and Alfie who had a pinch from the tail fin,” she says.
After one Training period of 12 daysAbout 20 fish followed the Soller reliably when training swimming. She could also recognize several of them from physical characteristics, such as the missing piece Staartvin on Alfie. Identifying the individual fish participating in the experiment was the scene for the next experimental phase.
[ Related: New evidence suggests dogs may ‘picture’ objects in their minds, similarly to people. ]
Ante
Then it was time to see if this same fish could tell Soller from another diver, Maëlan Tomaseek, co-author of a study and a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Clermont Auvergne in France.
Tomasek joined Soller for these dives and wore one wetsuit and fins with more color. Both divers started at the same point in the water and then swam in different directions.
On the first day the fish followed both Tomasek and Soller.
“You saw them struggling to decide who they want to chase,” says Soller.
Tomasek never fed the fish that followed him. From the second day the number of fish started considerably after the Soller.
To confirm that the fish learned to recognize the right diver, the team concentrated Six fish to study individually. Four of the six showed strong positive learning curves about the experiment.
“This is a cool result because it shows that fishing not only followed Katinka from habit or because other fish were there,” Tomasek said in a statement. “They were aware of both divers, tested them all and learned that Katinka produced the reward at the end of swimming.”
However, when Soller and Tomasek repeated the tests with identical diving equipment, the fish could not take them apart. According to the teamThis indicates that the fish associate the differences in diving equipment, probably the colors, with each individual diver.
“Almost all fish have a color view, so it is not surprising that the sea bream has learned to associate the right diver based on color surfaces on the body,” says Tomasek.
‘It’s time for us to see them’
People also do this when swimming under water, because faces are distorted by diving masks. It is the differences between fins, wetsuits, masks and other diving equipment that are often the best way to recognize someone.
With more time, the fish can learn to pay attention to more subtle human characteristics, such as hands or hair. According to the teamObserving that wild fish can quickly learn to use specific instructions to recognize an individual human diver provides more evidence that other fish species can recognize certain patterns to identify us.
[ Related: The ‘smart’ animal club keeps getting bigger. ]
‘It’s not coming [as] A shock to me that these animals, which navigate through a complex world and every minute with countless different types of interagation, can recognize people based on visual signals, ”study co-author and biologist Alex Jordan said in a statement. “I suppose the most surprising is that we would be surprised [if] They can. It suggests that we could underestimate the capacities of our cousins under water. “
“It may be strange to think of people who share a bond with an animal like a fish that is so far from us on the evolutionary tree that we do not understand intuitively,” Tomasek said. “But relationships between humans and animals can overcome millions of years of evolutionary distance if we take the trouble to pay attention. Now we know they see us, it’s time for us to see them. “
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