Scientists Are Proven Wrong

Science says fish have no power of hearing. But those in attendance during a nighttime aquarium observation thought differently…and had it demonstrated to them. The fish were fed at a regular hour in the afternoon. They knew this hour (therefore they must have a time sense) and grew as lively and restless as a lion at the Zoo. At an hour when they did not expect to be fed and were swimming tranquilly, the feeder slipped around behind the tank, leaving me in front to watch. He walked along the alleyway, as he does many time, a day. The fishes gave no sign of hearing his foot, steps. Then he rattled, once, the handle of the pail out of which he feeds them. The fish rose instantly swam about in circles, looking up toward the light from whence the keeper's hand and arm should appear.

This response to vibration, whether it hits a tympanum or a sensitized skin region, does not alter the evident fact that fishes respond to familiar sound. Do fishes learn from experience? A very amusing experiment was made on this point. A fish tank full of water was divided down the center with a clear glass partition. On one side minnows were placed; on the other, perch, which prey upon minnows. The perch immediately went for the minnows, bumping their noses repeatedly against the glass partition, which, it is interesting to note, they could not see. After two days of this they gave up and nursed their noses. The observer waited two days more, then removed the glass partition. The perch, discovering, one by one, that there was no longer a barrier there, began to swim about among the minnows, but so thorough had been the lesson learned, the association of nose bumping with minnows, that they did not chase them.

"When this memory had gradually faded," said the observer, "they preyed upon the minnows as before." If now meditated upon, the interesting theory is that animals do not have our color sense, but see ultraviolet rays. Again this gives food for thought. If the grouper sees a red rock as ultra-violet, why does his prey, the octopus, take the trouble to turn red when he settles on a red rock? As I locked the aquarium doors, and groped my way sleepily over the moonlit coral rock. I remembered a long-forgotten song of my childhood—that childhood in which one knew and did not have to reason about the consciousness of fishes.

“Oh hush thee my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the billows that sparkled so green. The moon o'er the combers looks downward to find us, asleep in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft is thy pillow, oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thine ease. No storm shall awake thee, no shark overtake thee, asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.”

By: davidbunch

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

other articles: Free dance lessons online I Miss You Quotes Cute Best Friend Quotes