Sorry but I have to agree with these. Yes, they know us - they know we bring the foods, but I think we tend to do a little too much anthropomorphizing. I think fish can make a positive association with our presence, but emotion may be a bit of a stretch.
I'm going to disagree with this one. I always wondered if my pet fish interacting with me was food driven or an emotional action. After getting into scuba diving, I have no doubt fish are smart, interactive creatures.
I think my shoaling/schooling fish only react to me for food. But I no longer believe my
gourami, puffers, and betta think that way.
Here are some of my scuba stories that changed the way I looked at things. Again, these are with non-schooling fish as I've noticed schooling and shoaling fish are all in their own world and don't care for people. No food is involved in any of these dives and we were not at a location where people feed them. If anything, they'd worry about fishing....
1. I was floating making eye contact with a calico bass on a shallow dive (15 feet deep). We were just kind of looking at each other for a few minutes. Another came up and started interacting with me too. We kept hanging out with them and interacting with them. In about 15 minutes, we had about 30 calico bass staring at us and all interacting with us. We thought is was the most bizarre thing. After we started swimming along, they followed us! Every single one of them. They were interested in us and wanted to keep playing. They swam with us the entire dive and we probably covered a quarter mile. If we had unlimited air, they would have stayed with us for hours.
We even surfaced a few times in awe of what was going on and to catch our bearings. It's disorienting on those shallow, cover tons of ground dives. They waited right under us, and resumed following us once we dropped back down.
This has actually happened to me twice at this location.
2. I posted pics of this in my previous comment. It's of me (blue mask). I was watching a fish who noticed I was watching it. It got curious and we started interacting. It looked at me and kept swimming back and forth around me. Eventually, it got comfortable enough that I could touch it. It enjoyed this, and kept positioning itself for me to pet and was swimming through my hands when I help my hand up like a "U". This fish followed us until the end of the dive.
3. Probably the most endearing example. It's the pics in my previous comment of my fiancé who is wearing the black mask. She was testing out our new camera on pieces of kelp.... I got bored and swam off, which is safe because we were only in 10 feet of water. Similar thing happened to the last scenario. I interacted with it for a few minutes and got it to follow me. My fiancé always jokes about how every time we get split up while diving, I come back with a sheephead companion. But we interacted with it for a while and tested the new camera on her. After playing for a bit, we swam past a snail which she picked up. She dropped it right in front of my fiancé. Apparently it wanted her to open it. So she cracked it open and the fish ate the meat. We kept playing with this fish.
We came back the next day, found her again, and hung out with it the entire dive. We called her "Freckles" as she has a bunch of little spots on her snout. So whenever we dive here, we try to find her.
But these are all examples of these fish playing with us. Playing is completely unnecessary for survival and they only do it for enjoyment. They obviously can't communicate with us in the same way we can with other people, or even dogs. But they absolutely communicate, interact, and form relationships with us. So if these solitary ocean fish are so interactive and playful, why would our solitary aquarium fish be any different?
