Friday, September 22, 2006

Smartest fish: Blue Ram?


I've noticed that my Blue Rams are very, very smart, perhaps the smartest of all my fish. All of them keep a close eye on me when I'm in the room, and if they even glimpse the bright red top of the food container, they start going crazy, swimming up and down the glass. None of the other fish seem to be able to associate the red and yellow container with feeding yet, they just see my hand above the tank. They also seem to be much less afraid of my hand, or anything else for that matter, than any of the other fish. It's pretty hard to scare these guys. They also will learn to feed from your hand! One of them knows exactly what's going on when he sees the net and he quickly hides. I don't think I could catch him unless I removed everything from the tank and chased him around for a bit. Only the net brings this reaction.

Just curious to see what the consensus is. What do you think the smartest fish is? My experience clearly shows Blue Rams are able to associate objects they see with past experiences, a big part of intelligence. Leave a comment and share your experiences!

3 comments:

Davy said...

Know what you mean about the Blue Rams, but Oscars have got to be the smartest, I've seem them trained to ring bells for food ;)

Gustavo Alcides said...

The smartest fish is an undescribed species few people have ever seen; it's never been caught (no recorded captures anyway)---that's how smart this fish is :)

Seriously, prize for fishbrains has to go the cichlids, most species, excluding haplos sensu lato which are big spiny killies and no true cichlids.

DJKronik57 said...

Wow, ringing bells for food? That's incredible. I guess cichlids do take the prize as a whole then.