The advice was executed, apparently, when researchers found that fish watch each other’s back while hunting for food, a practice that was once thought to be strictly solitary for the water dwellers.
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SMH wrote that scientists have found some species of birds and mammals helping out one another, but they used to think that such a behavior needed a highly developed brain and social skills, which is sadly not possessed by fish. Fish, too, are capable of reciprocal cooperation.
Study author Dr. Simon Brandl said that among rabbitfish pairs, one stays on guard while the other feeds, literally watching its partner’s back.
Some fish are capable of working towards common goals with others of their kind, according to new research from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia.
Australian researchers noted that their study should further awaken more efforts from our side to understand that many fish species are complex social organisms, and that some of them should be treated more nicely.
When researchers in contrast the habits of those fish to these attempting to find meals alone, they discovered that fish that go looking in pairs take extra “consecutive bites and penetrate deeper into crevices”, suggesting that this technique was a bonus.
A number of researchers have been debating since long on whether animals can cooperate without having highly developed cognitive and social skills, like those found in humans, primates and a few species of bird life.
Professor David Bellwood, one of Dr Brandl’s colleagues from James Cook University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, gave a statement if his own empathizing that the field experts have started changing their view of fish quite dramatically in recent years.
The research was printed within the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
However, the researchers were able to say that the relationship seems to be built on the reciprocal cooperation between food foraging partners. Scientists were amazed to observe these social patterns in the fish, they said that this type of behavior is unique among sea animals and is based on cooperation.
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Reciprocal cooperation, which requires an investment in a partner, which is later reciprocated, is assumed to require complex cognitive and social skills which fish have been deemed not to have.
