Here are 7 real facts about the emotional feelings of the fish. It is an incredibly challenging task to evaluate the emotional status of a fish. Actually, emotions are the result of psychological, behavioral, neurological, physiological, and genetic changes. All of these changes result in different kinds of emotions in a living organism.
Do fish have Emotional Feelings? Yes, fish have emotional feelings, which they express in many different ways. They can feel, recognize, love, and get into stress like feelings. Although their brains are not complicated, they have some emotions, which are hard to evaluate with little observation.
Although fish and other animals’ levels of emotions and consciousness can’t be the same as humans, different studies, tests, and science experiments have shown that fish have emotions.
Among all of these, they can feel happiness, anger, stress, love, etc. They are sensitive animals, and they have feelings as well.
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Do fish have Emotional Feelings?
They have a really small and simple brain. Their brain has no cerebral cortex in it, so they show less memory and learning behavior. Their brain is organized enough that it can learn tricks you teach to them. They are good at so many things and in recognizing their owner and caretakers.
They can play with toys and learn different kinds of tricks with them. They also love to play with small balls and rings mostly. Their happiness definitely associates with such playful objects, which proves that they have feelings.
Emotional Feelings of Love
Pets love their caretakers very much. They will love you if you are feeding them at the proper time. They will love you if you are giving them a suitable environment to live in. You can add a Natural Driftwood (Amazon) in the tank and they will be happy.
They show their love in different ways, like revolving around your finger while you are feeding them. They are not biting you, but this is an expression of love from your aquarium creatures as they can’t speak to you; that’s why they use signs and movements to express their love for you.
Feeling of Excitement
They show an excited behavior on their meal timings. Whenever they look at their food or something interesting, they show exciting behavior. Some are excited to play soccer and other games as well. They love to play with their toys like rings and balls.
Always try to feed your pet with various foods so that their excitement levels keep on a high level daily. They will become more expressive in this way. Also, try to feed them differently, like you can feed with automatic feeders someday and sometimes with your hands.
It will be enjoyable seeing your fish getting excited about their meals. Adopt this methodology, and you will see your pet’s enthusiasm level increasing day by day, and you will start understanding their gestures and other movements.
Recognizing their Owner
These water animals also have the ability to recognize their owner or caretaker. They have enough memory to remember their owner’s faces, and they do have emotions attached to them. But these are not very impressive and are hard to understand.
They can easily differentiate between their owner and the other people except for a few fish, which are dumb. But for this you have to spend some time playing with them, keeping your face in front of them daily for some training hours.
They feel happy to recognize their owners and try to understand and memorize their expressions with them at mealtime, play timings, and other activities.
Stressful Conditions
Now, this is another emotion that your fish has in some bad conditions. This behavior occurs when it gets out of oxygen or if there is some danger for them.
Temperature changes, pH fluctuations, dirty water, and other things like these can also lead your pet to stress.
For avoiding such kind of conditions, take great care of the oxygen supply in the tank. Besides this, keeping an eye on temperature and pH is also essential so that the fish may not show their emotion of fear or stress and can swim upside down.
Aggressiveness
Some of the species are aggressive when some others come to their territory. Some of them are aggressive for their homes and babies.
While a few species fight with their species fellows and are typical with other tank mates, these are some aggressive attitudes that this creature shows.
Sometimes it starts nibbling the other fellow’s fins and tail. This is another way your pet shows its aggressiveness.
For avoiding this bad emotion in them, keep them in a vicious tank with lots of space. Especially, take care of space for your betta because they become angry about their territory. You must clean the wood before adding to the tank.
Feeling of Pain
They feel a conscious pain but do not have the specialized receptors to feel enough proper pain conditions; they suddenly go to a stress state.
This condition is suffering as well as an emotional feeling. Extreme pain ultimately makes your pet unconscious and pale in color. There are also chances of death in this case. One more thing here is that these water animals are small enough to bear any severe pains.
Final words
Every time an emotion is retained over a living creature. We are always in our emotions states, fish are just the same, but their feelings are not strong and long-lasting.
Just a few species are most known for some of their behaviors. Like puffers are well known for their calm nature and smiles, bettas are famous for their aggressiveness.
Some people do not believe that fish can have feelings, but it is obvious that every living being has emotions attached to them and their situation. All you have to do is do a deep observation, and you will understand yourself.
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