The Emotional Lives of Fish: What Science Knows, and What We Ignore
The Silent Ones:
They flicker behind glass, slip through the ocean’s veins, lie breathless on ice.
To many, fish are the simplest of creatures.
No cry. No scream. No expression we recognize.
But just because something doesn’t beg, doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel.
Science is catching up to what intuition already knew:
Fish remember.
Fish learn.
Fish hurt.
And maybe, they even feel.
Fish Have Brains, And Not Small Ones
Fish brains are smaller than mammal brains by volume, but not always by complexity.
Some fish:
Navigate across vast distances
Build intricate nests
Recognize other fish by face
Use tools
Learn from one another
Species like wrasses, groupers, cichlids, and even manta rays show signs of cognition once thought exclusive to birds or primates.
The cleaner wrasse can pass the mirror test…a measure of self-awareness.
The archerfish calculates trajectory to shoot prey out of the air.
Manta rays may even show play behaviors and social bonding.
Memory in Motion
Contrary to myth, goldfish do not have 3-second memories.
They can remember:
Learned mazes
Feeding times
Social relationships
Predators
For weeks or months.
Some fish can even recognize the humans who feed them.
The zebra fish has become a model for studying long-term memory formation, helping researchers understand memory loss in humans.
They don’t just live moment to moment.
They hold on.
Do Fish Feel Pain?
This is the question science danced around for decades.
Because to say yes…to say they suffer…is to ask what it means to eat suffering.
But here’s what we now know:
Fish have nociceptors, pain receptors like ours
They respond to injury with stress hormones
They learn to avoid pain
They exhibit anxiety-like behaviors after trauma
They change feeding patterns when injured
Pain isn’t just reflex.
It’s processed.
It changes them.
Consciousness in Scales
We don’t yet know if fish are conscious like we are.
But they have the hallmarks:
Learning
Awareness of surroundings
Behavioral flexibility
Social learning
Anticipation
Some scientists argue for a “minimal self” in fish, a sense of agency and environmental responsiveness.
Others argue for sentience…the capacity to feel.
And isn’t that enough?
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The Ethics of Knowing
Now comes the part we want to turn away from.
If fish feel pain…
If they remember fear…
If they know loss, even dimly…
What does that mean for the way we fish?
For netting them in the millions?
For letting them asphyxiate in silence?
What does it mean to eat a creature that remembers?
Fishing Practices: A Quiet Brutality
Wild-caught fish often die by:
Suffocation
Crushing in nets
Ice baths while still conscious
Bleeding out
Farmed fish are slaughtered en masse, sometimes without stunning.
Some are bled alive.
Some die in systems too automated for mercy.
There are no federal humane slaughter regulations for fish in the U.S.
Out of sight. Out of sound. Out of mind.
They Are Not Simple
We believed they were less because it made it easier.
Easier to eat.
Easier to discard.
Easier to farm and forget.
But fish are not simple.
They are old.
They are architects of coral and memory.
They are ancestors in gills.
They do not need to cry out for it to be real.
They do not need to explain pain for it to exist.
So the next time you see one flicker in a stream, or on a plate, or behind glass, remember:
They are alive.
Not just in body.
But in thought, in fear, in a silence that doesn’t need words to matter.
