Originally posted by Rad:
Regarding the reaction of the hooked fish spooking the others, again conditioning might play a role. The pacu have always been spooky, when it was just them and the tilapia during feeding time there would be a boil and pacu would fly in all directions, who knows what frightened them, themselves? In the beginning everyone would stop eating for several minutes, but after a while the tilapia would continue regardless of what happened around them. As I said before if a fish is caught the pacu get out of Dodge.
That's fascinating, and very much in line with the "differences between species" theory.
From what I understand about evolution and animal behavior, it's not neccesarily a difference in intelligence between species. These differences in behavior and
conditionabilty, if you will (
), obviously benefit each specific species, or they wouldn't exist in their present form.
