A Fish That Likes Being Touched

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I’ve never seen anything like this:

This little guy just loves to watch me wherever I am in the room, he’ll do anything to get my attention. And when I look at him he flares out his gills and dances from side to side just hoping that I’ll come over to play. If I drop food in the aquarium he’ll ignore it and hope to play. I have to walk away to get him to go find the food which has floated away by then. That said, in another tank I have a second Blood Parrot Cichlid that loves me but doesn’t want to be touched. It’s like having one dog and one cat. You just have to love the differences.

Via Miss Cellania

5 thoughts on “A Fish That Likes Being Touched”

  2. mboydp

    How odd! Still, we know that animals have a higher degree of sentience than we ever thought. I hope the fish doesn’t have a skin condition that makes it want to be scratched!!! And yes, it might be a response to the artificiality of tank living. Along those lines, you might be interested in this essay from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/01/should-we-stop-keeping-pets-why-more-and-more-ethicists-say-yes?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=237698&subid=5551951&CMP=GT_US_collection

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    1. Bix Post author

      That was a great article. I really hope pet ownership goes out of fashion, as they put it. I think it’s wrong to have pets, zoos, work animals. Let them be.

      I agree with these excerpts:

      “The logical consequence is that the more we attribute them with these [human] characteristics, the less right we have to control every single aspect of their lives,” says Herzog.

      and…

      “The more we think of pets as people, the less ethical it is to keep them.”

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  3. Bix Post author

    When I first saw this video it looked like, yes, the fish craved some interaction. Why? Because it got to swim around the same plastic reed for its entire life? Inside the same glass enclosure? The more I think about it, the more disturbing it gets. I don’t think it has anything to do with love.

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