How Conscious Can A Fish Be?

ABOUT

When it comes how we treat fish, there is a paradox with devastating consequences.

On one hand, fish are the animals that we kill in the largest number for food, by far. Even a conservative estimate of how many we kill yearly is about 2 trillion, which is 17 times the number of humans who have ever lived.

On the other hand however, fish are the animals we protect the least from cruelty and suffering, both culturally and legally. Culturally, yanking them out of the water and suffocating them is considered a fun day out, and legally most laws that protect animals exclude them altogether.

In practice, this means that out of all the animals we use for food, fish are the animals who most likely suffer the most, both in numbers and intensity.

And one of the reasons for this is our outdated and inaccurate perception of fish. Unlike dogs, cats, chickens and pigs who we recognize are individuals who feel, think and suffer, we often think of fish as primitive, stupid animals who can’t feel pain. This allows us to not only disregard their suffering, but to dismiss the conversation entirely by saying: “who cares? It’s just a fish”.

That’s why, in this film, we cover the evidence that suggests that fish feel, think and suffer, much like dogs, cats and other animals. We introduce you to the smartest fish in the world, delve deep into the twisted research that ‘s been done on pain in fish, and answer the age old question: “does a goldfish have a 3 second memory?”

How Conscious Can A Fish Be?

ABOUT

SOURCES

"a video aired on TV featuring a goldfish by the name of Albert Einstein the 2nd."

"the first ever recorded video of a fish using a tool"

"it had only been about 50 years since Jane Goodall documented tool use in animals for the first time"

"But the feats of both Albert and this tuskfish are not exceptional."

"the part of our brains that makes it possible for us to do stuff like this is this outer layer right here: the cerebral cortex."

CHAPTER 1: CONSCIOUSNESS

"In 2014, researchers subjected a group of redtail splitfins to this situation." (the Ebbinghaus illusion)

"Atlantic cods can hear frequencies 20 times lower than the lowest frequencies we can hear"

"salmon can detect a smell that’s been diluted to a concentration of one part to 80 million"

"catfish can have 100 times more tastebuds than humans"

"Looking back in time, it was 400 million years ago that our evolutionary ancestors first crawled out of the ocean, and before then life had been thriving almost exclusively underwater."

“140 million years before that, an era called the Cambrian Explosion started [...] fish are the ones we inherited consciousness from”

CHAPTER 2: INTELLIGENCE

"This is a mangrove forest. A place that’s home to countless animals we could spend hours meeting."

"the archerfish when aiming must consider distance, angle, and how gravity will curve the trajectory of their jet"

"[archerfish] take into account exactly how far their target is, and shoot their jet so its tail end catches up with its front end exactly on impact, maximizing its attack potency"

"[archerfish] must compensate for how light bends when it enters the water through turbulent currents"

"[archerfish] have been seen to become better shooters not just by practicing, but also by observing and learning from the successes and failures of their peers"

"in the lab, [archerfish] have been successfully trained to recognize specific human faces"

"researchers presented a group of well bluestreak wrasses with two plates of food: one red, and one blue"

"one of the researchers decided to try the experiment again, but this time at home with his 4 year old daughter"

"imagine you’re a hungry bluestreak wrasse, and these 2 clients appear in front of you, looking to be cleaned"

"A cleaner wrasse can sometimes clean up to 2000 other individuals a day"

"Behavioral traits, personality, and intelligence all also play a role in helping an animal successfully survive and reproduce, and also evolve and develop over time"

“We obviously attach immense importance to abstract thought and language” “but in the larger scheme of things this is only one way to face the problem of survival.”

"much like we have learned to pack massive computing power in tiny computer chips, nature over millions of years has found a way to pack massive brainpower in tiny tiny brains"

CHAPTER 3: PAIN

“Lynne Sneddon [...] injected the lips of rainbow trouts with acetic acid, observed that it resulted in them rocking back and forth [...] and concluded that they must be experiencing pain.”

'There’s a lot of research that has found results along those lines"

"the go-to paper for anyone who wants to argue that fish don’t feel pain, and the paper that reviews and debunks all this research"

“this notion can easily be dismissed by looking at birds for example, who unambiguously suffer, and yet like fish, also don’t have highly differentiated, pain mediating cortical regions.”

"saying that fish can’t feel pain because they lack a cortex is like saying that humans can’t swim because we lack fins"

"these zebrafish were willing to pay a price - forgo being in the playground to experience the effects of the painkiller"

"the “absence of a neocortex doesn’t preclude animals from experiencing affective states”"

“evidence supports the position that fin-fish should be accorded the same considerations as terrestrial vertebrates in regard to relief from pain.”

"a young boy rose to fame in his local town for his unbelievable street performance act: he would walk on burning coal and put knives in his arms, without flinching"

"CIP is a condition that takes away people’s capacity to feel pain, and is so rare that only a few hundred people worldwide are estimated to be living with it."

"Ashlyn Blocker is one of those people" (her story)

"This is common for children with CIP, and they sometimes sustain life long injuries from childhood accidents"

“so few individuals with the disorder reach adulthood.”

CHAPTER 4: WHY THIS MATTERS

"589 million is the approximate number of cows we killed for food in 2019, 1.3 billion is that approximate number for pigs, and 79 billion is that approximate number for chickens."

"Instead of being estimated by individuals, the number of fish we kill for food is estimated by weight, and according to the FAO’s 2020 report on the state of world fisheries and aquaculture, “global fish production is estimated to have reached about 179 million tonnes in 2018”"

"76 million tonnes of wild caught fish must correspond to between 0.8 and 2.3 trillion fish, and 53 million tonnes of farmed fish must correspond to between 51 and 167 billion fish"

"2 trillion [is] 17 times the number of humans who have ever lived"

"while there are many different methods of commercial fishing some of the most common ones include..."

"Because these fishing methods more or less indiscriminately trap anyone and everyone who happens to come across them, they all end up catching animals who are not intended to be caught"

"Fishing gear also sometimes gets discarded, leading to animals getting entangled in them"

"bottom trawling nets damage habitats by scraping the ocean floor"

"we’re pretty much about to set the world record for the fishless oceans speedrun"

"This boat, for example, is a giant deep sea trawler"

"4000 tonnes of fish had already been caught and processed, which is the approximate weight of 1000 adult asian elephants"

"fish can be farmed in tanks, ponds, or pens"

"according to the owners of the farms they investigated, up to 1 in 5 fish die before slaughter"

"on multiple occasions, investigators witnessed fish displaying clear signs of consciousness over an hour after being put on ice"

"According to the “European council regulation on the protection of animals at the time of killing” [...] “farm fish are not included in this Regula-”"

"The US’s “Humane methods of livestock slaughter act”, England’s “welfare of animals at the time of killing regulations” and Canada’s guidelines on the humane treatment and slaughter of animals outlined in its “Safe Food for Canadians Regulations” all exclude fish entirely"

CREDITS

Illustrations

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