From the Archive: Shoalmates with Jonathan Balcombe

[From the Archive - Enjoy!]

Claudia talks to Jonathan Balcombe about fishes and their varied and incredible experiences. Using the concept of ‘shoalmates’ as a launch pad, they discuss some of the intra- and inter-species relations fishes engage in from work to cuddle and play. 

Date recorded: 30 November 2020

Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist with a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior. His books include Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows—a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages. His next book for grown-ups, Super Fly, will be published May 2021 by Penguin Books. A children’s story book about a boy and a fish is also scheduled for publication in 2021. He has taught courses in animal behavior and sentience for the Viridis Graduate Institute, and Humane Society University. He lives in Belleville, Ontario where in his spare time he enjoys biking, baking, birding, Bach, and trying to understand the neighborhood squirrels. Learn more about Jonathan and his work here. 

Featured:  

• A foray into the worlds of animals and humans by Jakob von Uexküll; 
• Sterling murmuration by canoeists; 
• The Ocean Sunfishes by Tierney Thys et al; 
• The Dark Hobby by Paradise Filmworks

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast, Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, and Jeremy John (Website) for the logo. 

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Welcome To Animals And Experience

Siobhan O'Sullivan 0:01

This is another eye roar podcast.

Jonathan Balcombe 0:05

Just the fact that these sensory capacities fall outside of the human bandwidth, to me says that well, they can experience certain conscious sentience related phenomena, certain experiences, uh in a realm that we can't. So we we definitely shouldn't hold ourselves up as the sort of gold standard, the the final word in in all the sensory experiences that that creatures can have.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 0:37

Welcome back to the Animal Turn, everybody. This is season two, episode eight. In this season, we are focused in on concepts pertaining to animals and experience. And in this episode, I'm talking to Jonathan Bulcom about the concept of shoalmates. Jonathan is a biologist with a PhD in mythology, which, as we've learned from earlier in this season, is the study of animals and behavior. He has taught courses in animal behavior and sentience for the Virtus Graduate Institute and this and the Humane Society University. He has two upcoming books, one called Superfly, focused in on the lives of flies, and the other a children's story book about a boy and a fish. His published books include Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows. We're going to be talking quite a bit today about this last book. It is a New York best time seller and is now available in 15 languages. And I have to say that it is an extraordinary book to read. It's extremely captivating, and almost every single page left me gobsmacked. The details about not only how fish experience the world, but the absolute variety of experiences they have is just extremely noteworthy and everybody should read it. So far in the season, we have perhaps been a bit too mammal-biased in our consideration of how animals experience the world. And in this episode, Jonathan reminds us that fish, or fishes rather, deserve such consideration too. Our concept and focus is shoalmates. This concept works to highlight how fish are social animals, but that they also have a variety and complexity of relations to them too. I hope that you enjoy learning about fish, the variety of experiences they have, and perhaps asking yourself how we could be better shoalmates too.

Meeting Jonathan Balcom

Claudia Hirtenfelder 2:27

Hi Jonathan, welcome to the Animal Turn. Thank you so much for joining me.

Jonathan Balcombe 2:32

Good to be here, Claudia.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 2:33

I was thrilled when you agreed to do the interview. I actually immediately went out and bought both two of your books, one Pleasurable Kingdom and the other, What a Fish Knows. And I'm about halfway through What a Fish Knows, and it's just brilliant. Thank you so much for the work you do.

Jonathan Balcombe 2:52

Glad you like it. It was fun to write.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 2:55

Yeah, you're you're such a great writer. Um I had Carl Safina and Catherine Gillespie on early on in the season too. And they're also just fantastic writers. All three of you somehow managed to meld both scientific knowledge and anecdotal stories in a way that really just brings animals' lives to the forefront. Um, what got you interested in animals and animal studies?

Jonathan Balcombe 3:20

Well, it starts to have a keen interest in animals themselves, and and that's nothing new for me ever since my earliest memory. I've been completely infatuated with anything to do with animals. Uh, and uh so writing about them is is is really exciting and fun. And science is taking such an interest in animals now in a way that they weren't uh in the last much of the last century. Scientists are asking questions about what animals think and feel, which is uh very exciting and and overdue. Um there was a period in the late 1800s when there was an interest in that, and then science kind of went to sleep on those kinds of questions. So there's a lot of really rich, uh interesting information to find in the scientific literature. And now with the internet, one can you sit on one's laptop in a coffee shop or in one's uh den at home or where have you and and access most of this useful information? It also helps to reach out to scientists and to interview them, and I I do a lot of that for my books as well.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 4:20

Yeah, and it's uh it's wonderful. Uh, could you maybe tell us a little bit about your backstory? What did you study and and how did you come to be an author?

Jonathan Balcombe 4:29

Well, I was uh I knew I wanted to help animals in my in my career. There's a there's a lot of problems with our human relationship with animals, and so by the time I was uh in graduate school in biology, I knew that's kind of what I wanted to focus on. And uh towards the end of uh about an eight-year stint with the Humane Society of the United States, my then supervisor said, Why don't you write a sort of um uh uh a detailed uh scholarly um manifesto about the use of animals in education, which is what I was doing at the time. I'd been working on that for many years. So I put that together and and uh it was it was a scholarly kind of thing, uh, but it was kind of book-length, and it made me realize I I could I could write books, and uh and it's something that I really liked doing. So uh it was a couple of years, I guess it was just a year after that book came out, that I had the inspiration for what turned out to be the book you mentioned, Pleasurable Kingdom, uh, and that got me rolling, and I I really it's become the most important and enjoyable part of

The Case For Animal Pleasure

Jonathan Balcombe 5:30

my professional work.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 5:32

Yeah, it it sounds amazing. Um early on in the season I spoke to Mark Beckhoff about the concept of cognitive ethology, and he explained, you know, everything it involves and how it involves observations. But you've developed in your is it pleasure kingdom or pleasurable kingdom?

Jonathan Balcombe 5:51

Pleasurable kingdom.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 5:52

Pleasurable kingdom. Uh did you develop the concept of hedonistic ethology in that book?

Jonathan Balcombe 5:59

Yeah, I would say not. I'm I've heard that term before, and it it's a it's a nice, you know, scholarly term, although I think most people might not recognize what it means, or many people might not. But uh I you know it's my hope that that book helped to stimulate more thinking about and study of the positive side of animals' lives. But one of the reasons I wrote that book was that so much of how we think about and talk about animals is in the negative, uh, their capacity to feel pain and to suffer. Very important, of course, that that be discussed. Uh, but so many experiments and studies done on animals use punishment as a way to, uh, such as uh restricting food to make them motivated to do this kinds of tests that the scientists want to do on them, uh, instead of offering them rewards, which which has gradually become more and more done. But um just generally our our scientific interactions with animals have been have been negative, and our and our perspective about their lives has been negative. If you turn on the TV for nature documentaries today, you still generally see a lot about the struggle for life, a battle for survival, competition. Um and I'm not denying that these trials and tribulations happen for wild animals, but also there's an enormous amount of leisure at certain times for certain animals, but certainly pleasure. Um, I think you know, nature proceeds by and evolution proceeds by re rewarding animals for what is useful behavior, for what behaviors that tend to promote survival? So yeah, I I I I try to push forward that point repeatedly in that book, Pleasurable Kingdom, and a later pictorial book called The Exultant Ark, which kind of presents these kinds of phenomena in a more visual fashion.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 7:51

So it's trying to so would the hedonistic pathology be kind of the practice of trying to observe how animals enjoy life?

Jonathan Balcombe 8:00

Exactly. Yeah. There's so many uh ways that they can enjoy life. Some of the most basic uh things that animals need to do to be successful, quote unquote, in their lives. I mean, to to and to stay alive is to is to get food, of course. Um we we we know we find food very rewarding. Um the taste of it, the smell of it, the and the this the experience of consuming it. Uh why should we think differently for other animals? Uh finding shelter. If you're cold, it feels good to get warm. If you're hot, it feels good to get cool. Um and animals will bask in the sun, they'll lie on cool rocks in the morning. If it's hot, uh they will you know seek water to cool down in or find safe places. They will build dens. Uh and and I just want to add that that's a really critical aspect of it too, is performing um work uh is meaningful for animals to build a nest if you're a bird. Yes, there's a lot of instincts at play, but there's also a lot of consciousness going on there. And uh I didn't mean to I didn't I just realized I just mentioned the word play, which is another very important aspect of of animals um learning and becoming effective adults. Play serves that purpose. And but the animals are not thinking about Darwinian fitness and evolutionary benefits when they do that. I I don't think they are. My guess is that they are simply playing because it's it's feels fun. It feels fun to do, just as we we we do it for that reason as well.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 9:31

Even as you're you're speaking here, I'm smiling because you're you're talking about you know, animals laying on something that's cool when they're hot. And I smile because I can relate. I you know as you say, we we know what that relief feels like. And uh and we also smile when we see animals in our lives doing these things somehow. I guess the extent to which we can really know what's going on, um, you know, people always say, well, how can you really know it? But there is a an intuitive kind of feeling of connectedness when you do something fun together, like play.

Jonathan Balcombe 10:05

That's right, intuitive and empathic. The fact that we can experience these feelings uh means that we kind of have a baseline experience to go on, and then we can use that as kind of the the the template on which to interpret other animals' behavior. It is, of course, uh uh an ongoing challenge in studying animals that we cannot completely bridge the gap of privacy, the fact that another individual's experience is is separate from ours. It's private in the sense that we can't get inside their heads and can't get inside their bodies. Well, we you know that that applies across the board, including within other members of our own species. Of course, of course, we have the the benefit of being able to verbalize our experiences and report it but verbal report them verbally, and uh we're more ready to accept that. And I think we should be more ready to accept accept that, even though one can lie and one can try and deceive, uh, as can animals. But when we see uh a squirrel, uh a couple of squirrels chasing each other across the garden, well, that's interesting. I I mentioned that it that example because that's that's an example of the challenge, challenge. Is it aggressive? Is one chill squirrel angry at the other and chasing the other squirrel, or are they playing? Uh and in certain species in certain contexts, it's it's pretty clear which it is. It's pretty clear that a behavior is is a is a joyous positive one, and play is certainly one of the one of the easier ones to spot. But um, yeah, uh, you know, there's there's so many ways that animals in engage in behaviors that are A, not only important to their survival, but B rewarding, intrinsically rewarding.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 11:48

Yeah, it's it's beautiful. And in in your uh book, which we're probably going to speak a fair bit about today, uh What What a Fish Knows, uh you focused obviously on on fish uh or fishes, um, which we'll talk about why you make the distinction. In Pleasurable Kingdom, did you focus on a particular species or was it just a general uh a general interest in animals enjoy?

Jonathan Balcombe 12:13

Well, the the thrust of the book was to was to get across the idea that animals also have fun in their lives. Um so in that sense it's a very general um project and general coverage of the topic. But but to make the case and to get people engaged and to be convincing, uh you have to get specific, right? So there's certainly references to plenty of scientific studies and uh lots of anecdotes because science at that time and even today, but it but it's gotten a lot better even since 2006

Why We Overlook Fishes

Jonathan Balcombe 12:45

when that book came out. Uh because scientists, by and large, didn't study pleasure, there weren't many, weren't a heck of a lot of scientific studies to go on. So uh, you know, personal experiences and the anecdotes from others and other individuals uh were were helpful in in and important in in making that book um thorough and complete. Um with something like uh What a Fish Knows, which which is was written ten years later, by then um well and I shouldn't say by then, it's a topic that there was uh a a lot of science that I could draw from to make the argument that fishes are not just unfeeling things, they are they are complex, sophisticated, sentient, social, virtuous, etc. There's this whole suite of behaviors that they show. Um, of course, they're a hugely diverse group of animals, over 100 over 33,000 described species and probably a few thousand more, uh, so and many of which we haven't studied in detail at all. Um but um there they're they represent a huge range, and of course, what one species can do doesn't mean another species can necessarily do. Uh but there's a lot of really great science, so I was able to really um make the book, I think, more convincing for the science, but also it's critical to include the the anecdotes, the stories, because they really touch the heart. Where where the science reaches the mind, I think the anecdotes and the stories have more power to engage the the emotions, which is vital if you want to make a book any message convincing to an audience.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 14:25

Yeah, um and it's how researchers and and animals experience one another. And just because it's not written in a paper doesn't mean it's not um meaningful. Now something you said there really struck me, and it's also on the first page of your book, uh, that there are 33,000 uh fish. And uh I gotta admit, when I when I went into this, I you know I just thought a fish is a fish, and I was really I mean, obviously I knew there were differences, but I was really naive to how many differences there are, and I kind of just had this, you know, you know, that stereotypical idea of a pencil-drawn fish. And then you say uh right at the start that that number, 33,000, is more than all of the amphibians, birds, and mammals combined.

Jonathan Balcombe 15:13

And reptiles.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 15:15

And reptiles. And and then you said that it's it's sixty percent of all animals with a backbone. It's just I mean, my mind literally went through several mini explosions. Then I started to think about how much variety there is amongst mammals. I mean, you you can't compare a human to a lion, to a zebra, to a giraffe, to a raccoon or squirrel. I mean, they're they're so different. So how do you think we came to have, you know, such a simple understanding of what fishes who fishes are?

Jonathan Balcombe 15:51

Well, there's a lot that could be said about that. Uh my my own pet theory is that um we've been relatively alienated from fishes more than any of the other vertebrates, because all those other ones you just listed live on land and breathe air. Uh we can hear them, we can see them in a day-to-day basis. Whereas fishes, you can look out over an ocean, a lake, a river, what have you. And then maybe tens of thousands within inches of that surface, and yet we we we miss them. We don't see them, we don't notice them. And it's only in the last half century, with the advent of scuba gear and underwater cinematography and the like that we have been able to delve into their lives in a more sort of much more personal, intimate level. So but the the alienation also comes from not not just being able not just having a difficulty to tune into them, but also the fact that they um have there was a point I was gonna make and it just completely blew it in my head. Okay, I I think I'm remembering now. The fact that they um they don't blink, uh that we don't hear their sounds. I have to put it that way because they're not silent. Many, many species make lots of different sounds. Um, but when you know the staring eyes, uh well, they live in the water, they don't need to blink the way we do or the way animals on land. I I think these little things uh contribute to that kind of alienation and and they they add fuel to those who still make the argument, such as it is, that fishes uh are insensitive to pain and can't suffer. Um those the numbers of people who believe that are are dwindling, um, certainly among scientists, but there are still

Pain Pleasure And Fishing Ethics

Jonathan Balcombe 17:30

some who who would make that claim, even though I think the evidence clearly shows otherwise. So um yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 17:36

Uh you you dedicate a whole chapter to speaking about the idea of uh fishes and consciousness um and whether or not they feel pain. Uh so I'm guessing, based on what you said, that they definitely do feel pain and they enjoy and they enjoy lives. They they feel pain and pleasure.

Jonathan Balcombe 17:58

Yeah, I mean I I talk about that at quite some length in the book. And I and the reason I felt it was important to have a chapter on consciousness and awareness and sentience and pain and pleasure was because there is still some debate, and they are still, you know, scientists aside, there are legions of fishermen who uh who cling to the belief that these animals don't feel any pain or suffering. Uh if if you know it tweaks the conscience of what they do, if if you're going to start believing that they are suffering and feeling pain, uh it makes it a little tougher to uh justify catching and killing them the way we do, which which are methods that are they exist for convenience, not for ethical efforts to minimize their pain and suffering, unfortunately.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 18:45

So when we start to actually view and understand their lives and their experiences in a more meaningful way, uh, and it becomes more common knowledge that potentially this could have real-world implications for how human and human and fish relations.

Jonathan Balcombe 18:59

Well, one hopes. I mean, there's always a gap between the realization of the knowledge and the scientific information that shows that animals are capable of certain things, and then uh the change in our behavior. There's a lot of other forces at work, right? So, you know, fishes are killed in uh huge, vast numbers, astronomical numbers, um, because we want to eat them. And uh it's uh it's one thing to realize that they may be feeling pain and suffering, but for people to change their eating habits is a is another thing entirely.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 19:30

So yeah, it's it's incredibly thorny and prickly when you start to speak about people's food and how we eat. Uh but when you look at the numbers of animals who are being uh killed, I think fish are right up there, right? They they are probably the most the most exploited of all animals in terms of numbers at least.

Jonathan Balcombe 19:50

Aaron Powell Sure, just as they outnumber in in species diversity all the other vertebrates. If if you if you combined all the vertebrate animals, the the other vertebrate animals, non-fish that we humans kill to eat every year, it would still be uh combined, the combined number would be just a fraction of the number of fishes that we kill uh each year. The estimates range from a conservative end of a few hundred billion to uh possibly one to two trillion. And uh because it's difficult to estimate the numbers because the the the data kept by the organizations that track these data are are by weight and not by individuals. But if you do some math and and look at the numbers, then at the weights you can kind of make an estimate uh for those figures I just gave.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 20:38

The numbers are unfathomable. Um so something that you've you've said, we've both tried to use, and I'm trying to use the word fishes. It feels kind of uh strange. It doesn't feel grammatically correct somehow, but there's a very distinct reason for why you encourage people to use the word fishes instead of fish. Uh could you explain?

Jonathan Balcombe 21:00

Yeah, and I don't want to sound dogmatic about it. Uh you know, habits are habits, and we've been calling uh we've been using the collective term fish for for for many individual fishes for a long time, and and uh, you know, fair enough, okay. I'm I'm not offended by that or anything, but I did want to try and make the point uh in my book that you know we're talking about individuals here. Each one is unique. There are actually scientific studies of fish personalities. Uh there is, you know, just as grains of sand even are unique, no two are the same. Well, of course, no two fishes are the same. Evolution by natural selection works on individual variable variation. So um they're different, all of them are different. And to just call them fish, well, we do have terms like sheep and bison, for instance, for mammals that use a singular form for uh for plural for the plural. And uh I I was just trying to make the case, the point that you know let's let's not forget. That these are individuals. The word fish is perfectly acceptable and usually applied to more than one species of fish, but not typically used to refer to more than one individual. Of course, it does get it does start to sound a bit pedantic when you talk if you talk about salmons and cods and things like that, uh, species that are routinely used in the sing in the singular for the plural. Um so, you know, again, I don't want to be uh too uh much of a stickler about that, but it was a way to try and make the point uh to readers that we are talking about individuals here.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 22:33

Well, I think the words we use are quite uh important. Uh I had a conversation with someone today, so I do research on cows, and I've following uh Catherine Gillespie, I've kind of tried to stop using the word cattle instead of cows. I mean to use cows instead of cattle, uh just because the etymology, you know, cattle means property and it means capital. Um, but cows, even though it speaks to the the female of the species, uh, I think it more colloquially talks to who they are as individuals, not just as um as you know, commodities. So I I do I I don't interpret what you're asking or saying as being pedantic, but rather a kind of an encouragement to think more deeply and how language shapes how we view different animals.

Jonathan Balcombe 23:22

Good. Well, let's hope that uh other readers feel that way as well. By the way, I was just curious, did you say that the word cattle origin is linked to the word capital? I didn't realize that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 23:33

Yes. Um I'm back now, all of a sudden, as soon as I have a direct question, I get like I second guess myself, but yeah, uh to towards capital and property. So there are there are etymological links, um which is just really fascinating uh because obviously cows have been um used as a form of property relations for for a very long time and a means of trading between different people. So yeah, I I do think that the words we use are significant, and I'm going to try and use fishes more regularly. So thank you for thank you for disrupting my thought.

Jonathan Balcombe 24:09

Yeah, I I I certainly agree with you on the the importance of how we use language with with regard to animals. Uh uh I have a lot of colleagues who are quote unquote animal people, right? They're pro-animal people. They they want the world to be a much better place for animals and they want human-animal relations to be much better. And you know, just one, you know, the the objectification language of it. Uh I've seen captions like this a female cardinal returns to its nest to feed its young. It's like, wait a minute, you just said it's a female. Uh so she she's returning to her nest to feed her to feed her young. And and the one that really gets me and gets a lot of p my friends and colleagues is is the some criminal commits a heinous act and is describing as having act like an acted like an animal.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 24:53

I mean, that's that's a very we we've touched on it in some episodes. It's it's it's obviously a very historically loaded concept, and it's a very it's a very challenging concept for different groups of people. Um you know, that's been used as a way, it's it's it's both offensive to groups of people and to uh animals. But to be called an animal shouldn't be a slur, but it obviously has been called because we are animals, but um yeah, it's just it's a really hard conversation to have just because of how the concept's been used historically.

Shoals Schools And Spawning Strategies

Jonathan Balcombe 25:26

Yeah, indeed.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 25:28

Um if we could make a switch now to the the focus of the show today, which is a looking at the concept of shoal mate. Um so I was doing a bit of reading about this this morning, um, and in the lead up to today's interview. I had no idea that a shoal and a school of fish are different to one another. Could you explain the difference?

Jonathan Balcombe 25:51

Yes, a school is a more orderly, usually unidirectional flow of fishes. So, you know, uh a hundred million herrings in a school uh that are migrating up to the South African coast, say for instance, uh, would be referred to as a school. They they have a singular purpose in mind and they're all kind of headed in the same direction in kind of an orderly, unidirectional fashion. So that would be a school. Um, and then a shoal is a little bit more random ragtag cluster of fishes who are who are together. There's there's definitely some you know joining, staying staying amongst each other deliberately, but they're kind of uh kind of higgledy-piggledy. Uh they may be plucking away at uh algae off a coral reef and all kind of facing different directions. So uh that's a that's a better that's an example of what we call a shoal.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 26:45

I heard a really cool metaphor uh for explaining them where a shoal is like imagine a group of people walking down a street in a city and they're all kind of going about their individual lives versus a group of people who are marching in a band or marching in an army lineup, that there are groups of people, but their their way of being with one another is quite different.

Jonathan Balcombe 27:06

Yeah, it's a good analogy.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 27:08

Um you've mentioned herrings there. Uh so herrings I saw or read that they are always in a a shoal, that they're they never they never leave their other herrings. A herring is with all the other herrings all the time. Is that is that true?

Jonathan Balcombe 27:24

Um I but I that's I don't actually have never thought about it really. Um I'm trying to think of any example of of herrings who when they're not swimming in a cohesive fashion in a school, as we say. And and on the top of my head, I I think, yeah, it does sound like perhaps they are always in schools. Uh by the same token, they they have to mate and spawn. And I would think that during that period of their yearly existence, that they are not swimming in one direction, that they are breaking off into pairs and uh doing the whole spawning thing on the coastlines where they do that. I've seen aerial images of um of the aftermath of spawning of some of the most abundant species, such as herring and anchovies and menhaden and the like. And uh from the from the sky, there's this literally there's this white slick from all the propagures, all the sperm and eggs that have been released into these. The the numbers are incredible. And and that's that's actually a very effective strategy for uh species that produce lots of um eggs and sperm, is that they um they they do it synchronously. They all do it in huge numbers all at the same time. So there's an absolute glut of food for those who feed on on, say, the eggs. Um, and they can't they're overwhelmed, you know. Whatever animals might be feeding on those eggs, they can't eat them all. So that the many, many of the eggs will survive for that reason.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 28:52

That's incredible. Um you mentioned herrings uh elsewhere in in your book for what's a very unique something I'd never thought of. So you had spoken about sound and the different ways that uh fish or different fishes can make sound. And herring have a really unique way of producing sounds.

Jonathan Balcombe 29:12

Yeah, that's right. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, sound production is is actually an important communication tool for many species of fishes, and and they use different parts of the body to do that. There's the the grinding of teeth, the gnashing of teeth, the swim bladder, which is a buoyancy organ in the in the middle of the body. I think some fishes may have several swim bladders, but in any event uh the the organ, the splim bladder has been co-opted through evolution by a number of species as a sound-producing organ because it can be resonated, uh, vibrated, it can be rubbed against neighboring uh tissues in the body in a in strategic ways that produce sounds. And then you have herrings uh who have the curious habit of releasing gases from that swim bladder uh at certain times, and it produces a noise, it produces a sound that is used, for instance, to communicate in the dark. It seems to have sort of democratic uses where um these frequent repetitive ticks, which is what the scientists called them, and if you do the acronym, you can probably figure out what the the little joke there, they these these um herring farts, for want of a better term, they uh they allow they allow the the fish to be more strategic in their cohesiveness and their ability to make decisions um during nighttime when they don't want to be in certain parts of the water where predators may lurk. Uh this is sort of one of the one of the functions that this this unusual uh form of communication seems to serve.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 30:45

And you know, why do you think looking at and paying such close attention to sounds and smells and different senses, you know, the theme of this season is looking at experience. And we've spoken about how important, you know, thinking about animals' bodies is for looking at and understanding their experiences, but you focus in on particular senses as a way of accessing and trying to understand the lives and the worlds of of fish. Why do you think that route is so important?

Jonathan Balcombe 31:16

Well, I'm really glad you're focusing on on the word experience. I I think uh that's really where it's at. Uh that's what makes life worth living, that's what gives color and richness to life. And I mean color in the in the in the more broad general sense, although uh fishes have superb color vision, or many of them do. Um the the experience is how our senses inform us. You know, that that's what experience is. And it's the senses that make that happen. You know, when we talk about sentience, which is a a term that unfortunately has yet to sort of come into popular uh use in society, uh such an important concept, the capacity to feel and

Experience Umwelt And Fish Senses

Jonathan Balcombe 31:55

the capacity to have experiences. Uh to be able to feel and have experiences requires some degree of consciousness. Uh, I've recently finished writing a book about insects, flies to be exact. Uh, it's coming out in a few months. And uh in that book, I also devote a chapter to a discussion about the evidence for sentience, for the capacity to feel, uh, to have experiences in insects, which is a tougher challenge to make that case than with fishes, but there's some really intriguing science out there. And so it does appear that as science and humanity in general becomes a little bit more informed and open-minded about animals, uh, we're we're we're realizing that the realms of experience are much broader than we thought across the swath of life. Sure, there may be life forms, maybe amoebas, bacteria, where there's no experience, although I have heard of, I've heard of certain people who will even argue that, say, bacteria may have experiences. They certainly can respond to stimuli. So, you know, where do you draw the line? Most scientists draw the line on whether the animal is conscious. And of course, that's not really drawing a line because there's a big debate about where we draw the line on consciousness. But as the great animal rights philosopher Tom Reagan used to say, wherever you draw that line, draw it in pencil, because uh new scientific discoveries are causing us to need to revisit those, that line again and again and again. Consider octopuses, which are invertebrates, you know, they're they're mollusks, you know, they're close relatives of snails and slugs, and most people are gonna just w wave their hand and say, forget it. I don't think snails and slugs have any feelings. There is some scientific evidence to to contradict that view, uh, but it but you know, they're close relatives or they're relatives in the same phylum mollusca, the the cephalopod mollusks and most notably the octopuses, they show, you know, I mean, there's books being written about them that show personality and emotion and uh uh cognitive skills and playfulness and you know qualities that we never would have thought that invertebrates have. And there's some pretty interesting studies of insects that I draw attention to in my book that certainly give one pause before making any conclusion about them not having feelings or experiences.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 34:04

Oh, I'm so excited to read it. Uh, you know, you make you make me think of uh Vonuxel, who I I know you've you've pulled on in your book as well, and trying to understand their umwelt, their their life worlds, and and using senses, their, you know, the ways in which we don't experience the world in the same way, but it doesn't mean that we can't at least strive to have some empathy or some understanding by focusing on how different animals do experience the world.

Jonathan Balcombe 34:34

That's right. I mean, humans are not the gold standard of sensory experience when we consider how much better uh than ours is a dog's sense of smell. Um and uh there's some animals that have a sense of smell that leaves dogs in their in their wakes, and uh then the visual capacities of uh birds of prey, say, uh, and the the uh the sense of hearing of bats who can hear, you know, in the ultrasonic range way beyond the level that we can hear. Just the fact that these sensory capacities fall outside of the human bandwidth, to me, says that, well, they can experience certain conscious sentience-related phenomena, certain experiences, uh, in a realm that we can't. So we we definitely shouldn't hold ourselves up as the sort of gold standard, the the final word in in all the sensory experiences that that creatures can have.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 35:27

I love that you highlight the different um senses and that it goes far beyond the the five senses that we kind of think about. And you you delve a bit into that uh and you and you talk about um you know sight and sound and smell and taste, but you also start to speak uh which coming back to the idea of um shoal and and shoalmates, um, because you you spoke about octopus. I'm getting ahead of myself. The different senses. Uh when you spoke about shoals and thinking about shoal mates, uh different beings that hang out with one another, a sense that seemed really important in that was uh what you were calling pressure senses or or lateral lines.

Jonathan Balcombe 36:11

Sure, yeah. Fishes, uh bony fishes, most of them have a lateral line, which is a row of sensitized scales along the midline from front to back. You can see it on a lot of fishes, this line going down the middle on each side, that is sensitive to uh changing water pressures. Uh, there's the there's a there's little cup like cup, uh little whisker-like structure inside a cup at the very micro level of these cells along the lateral line that are very um sensitive to changes in water flow and water pressure. So you with their lateral line, fishes are able to sense uh changes in the quality of water and perhaps the presence of another fish, or and if it's a predatory fish, really good information to have if it's in the dark and uh depending on the context to move toward or move away from that from that stimulus. So, yeah, it's a really nice example of a sensory capacity that we don't have well developed, that they have very well developed, and it's very useful for them living in an aqueous environment.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 37:11

And would they use this so when thinking about uh fish moving together, is this how you explain those kinds of striations of fish, how they're able to move? You know, it seems like they're moving at the same time, uh, you know, thousands of fish doing something at the same time. Is this the sense that helps them to do that?

Jonathan Balcombe 37:32

I believe it's it's implicated as one of the more important senses. I think there is, if it's in in light conditions, of course, if it's dark, then vision is of no use. But um definitely scientists have taken a keen interest in these large coordinated movements that you see, the murmurations of starlings in flight and uh the the rapid changes of directions that they can do in such a coordinated fashion. Uh and similarly, large schools of fishes, you you you turn on the BBC and you'll often see you know the so-called bait ball, which is a bit of a uh of a utilitarian term for a large group of uh these fish, small fishes who are trying to avoid being caught, and they clump cluster together as a defense tactic, safety in numbers, and then this this incredible swirl and the coordination with which they can move around and stay in a spherical shape or whatever shape, you know, and then splits apart when the shark or the or the swordfish or whatever large predator swims through to try and catch one. Um it it it it I believe the current uh state of the knowledge is that it's a combination uh of vision if it's in the if it's in the daylight, but um probably more importantly, this these lateral line pressure sensors where the fishes are very tuned into their neighbors. Um and there are minute delays between one individual and another changing direction, uh, but they're so brief that we don't really notice it, and it looks like they they move about as one.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 38:59

Well, it that it it is just uh sorry, I said striations just now I meant to say memorations. Um it is just so incredibly beautiful to see. Uh it's it's awe-inspiring when uh yeah, it's it's mesmerizing.

Jonathan Balcombe 39:14

Yeah, there's a there's actually, sorry to interrupt you, Claudia. There's a there's a video that that I recommend. Uh I don't know the name of the video, but um it's uh about a three or four minute video. It's two young women who go canoeing, maybe somewhere in northern England, I have a feeling, and uh they're they're paddling and they they had a camera with them, and uh, and just out of the blue, this massive murmuration of certainly tens of thousands, maybe more, of starlings flies overhead and morphs into these different shapes, and they filmed it, and they're just uh I I've watched that video five times and I I get all emotional every time I watch it. It's so beautifully done.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 39:52

I've got guessbumps right now. Uh just those those kinds of chance encounters uh where you're just exposed to the wonder and the beauty. I've seen some of those videos where you where you get a sense of bioluminescence, uh which just blows my mind. It's like Avatar in real life. Uh just the idea that you could see people walking through waves, and every step they take, there's these like bioluminescent uh um it's just beautiful.

Jonathan Balcombe 40:21

Yeah, that's right. Uh the ocean certainly has these lovely uh blooms of uh bioluminescent algae from time to time, and the the visual effect is yeah, stunning and hard to describe without seeing it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 40:32

Yeah, uh absolutely incredible.

Reef Allies Across Species

Claudia Hirtenfelder 40:35

Uh so when we think about fish encountering one another and being in social groups, uh would a shoal only be fish of the same species, or are we talking here about uh you know fishes interacting across species lines?

Jonathan Balcombe 40:53

It's an important question. Uh it gets into interspecies communication and interspecies behaviors and in interactions. Um I I as far as I know, these these schooling species that are noted for their massive schools, the the herrings and menhadens and sardines and and those sorts of ones, I I don't know if they form mixed species schools. It wouldn't surprise me. It certainly happens. You there's certainly mixed flocks of birds, for instance, who uh benefit from being amongst different species that have uh more developed senses in certain realms, and so they complement each other for being vigilant. Uh certainly fishes on reefs forage together in mixed species groups. Um, one of my favorite examples of mixed species interactions is between groupers and moray eels, which are two predatory fishes on reefs. And um, yeah, now we're talking about individuals, but um they they team up and they hunt together for uh on on the reef. And because their their styles of hunting are complementary, they they do much better at catching food over a certain time period if they collaborate than if they work individually. The moray eel is a slippery, slender creature that can swim into nooks and crannies in the reef, thereby catching or chasing out a little fish who goes to hide there. And if the fish manages to escape the moray eel and gets out into the open water, well, of course the grouper is is waiting. And it's a pretty sophisticated collaboration because it involves referential signaling in which the grouper invites the moray eel, and not just any old moray eel. Studies have shown that they have their favorites and they go and invite them, they know where they live, and and if they're both in the mood to feed, they they head off together, swimming in very close together, and then they perform their feats. And and groupers will point to uh a fish who've escaped in the reef for over 20 minutes sometimes, trying to get that moray nearby to come and uh chase it out. And uh the grouper will sometimes uh swim over and and and signal to the moray to sort of come come over. I mean, it's a very intentional type of behavior that speaks to an animal who is not just aware, but remarkably intelligent and uh forward-thinking and resourceful and planning. Yeah, a lot of what fishes do indicates that they're thinking ahead. They know what they're they already have their plan worked out.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 43:16

Unbelievable. And another another uh interaction that blew my mind was when you were speaking about sunfish, and they have a whole, it seems like a whole range of social relationships beyond their own species.

Jonathan Balcombe 43:32

Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, there's a new, there's actually, I just want to mention there's a new book about uh sunfish, uh the ocean sunfish, uh just just coming out by uh a friend and colleague of mine named Tyranny T H Y S is her last name. And uh I believe it's a scholarly book, so it's pretty expensive, unfortunately. But uh uh I'm sure it's going to be packed with a lot of really interesting information about how these massive uh it's the it's the Of the bony fishes in the oceans, I believe, the Mola Mola, a really big old one. It could be a century old, wood can weigh over two tons. And uh yeah, they're known for for occasionally or probably regularly um coming to the surface and swimming, lying on their side. They're they're flattened, they're kind of flattened, they're big disc-shaped fish, and very bizarre. They're in the pufferfish family, and they'll lie on their side to solicit parasite removal services from gulls who have gathered on the on the surface of the ocean. And so the the both species know the know the know the drill. And so the the sunfish cooperates by exposing his or her sides to these uh gulls, and the gulls get food because they can pluck out these sometimes quite large ocean copepods and sea lice from the skin. So the uh it's a classic mutualism, and this time between a fish and a bird, where the fish gets a parasite removal service and the gulls get some food.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 45:00

That example just blows my mind. Uh you know, it means the fish fishes were looking up at some points and saw birds and saw an opportunity. Or how did that first how did that first experience happen and how is that passed down and between different groups of uh fishes and birds?

Jonathan Balcombe 45:17

I wish I knew. You know, that question is uh is one I often ask myself when I see examples of complex behavior. You think, you know, who who was the Einstein fish who first came up with this idea? You know, somebody uh had to sort of kind of do it first. It's just it has there has to be a first for everything. And uh, you know, I think a lot of these behaviors maybe evolve in stages, but there's also critical steps, critical stages. You know, the the grouper who first shakes his or her head as an invitation to Amoray eel, uh the the the ocean sunfish who first went up and swam on its side to make it easier for gulls to you know, the the all these behaviors. And it does speak to the remarkable flexibility, intelligence, opportunism of not just evolution and natural selection, but the individuals who make up populations of animals.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 46:05

Yeah, because it takes someone to both make make a communicative gesture and someone else to receive it and accept it. Uh, you know, someone to I mean, I think we've all had probably similar experiences with our cats and our dogs who who are in our communities where they do something odd and you're trying to figure it out. You're like, what do you mean by this? What are you trying to tell me? And then you have that moment when it clicks and you're like, uh-huh. And the next time you they do X with their body, you you know what it means. You start to get a sense of the different looks and the different, and I think, yeah, you start to just develop a language between between you across species, which is just unbelievable.

Jonathan Balcombe 46:45

Yeah, little wonder now that uh dogs, domestic dogs have become surprisingly only recently, but they've become uh the darlings of a lot of uh ethology research on animal social behavior because we we know them so well, we can read their signals so well, and vice versa. You know, they've been living with us for 15,000 or so years, and so there's a very well-developed uh intuitive uh sensory connection between the two species.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 47:11

Yeah, it's it's great. Um so so we are clocking, if you can believe it, we're already at 45 minutes. Uh it's what a great conversation. I I just wanted to come back to the the concept of of shoalmates. So we haven't really spoken about it as a concept per se, um, which is totally

Shoalmates Touch Culture And Farewell

Claudia Hirtenfelder 47:30

totally fine. Uh, but I just wanted to maybe get into a bit of a philosophical thought experiment with you here. Where what do you think the value would be of starting to use words like showmates to actually think through the experiences of animals?

Jonathan Balcombe 47:46

Well, first of all, I think it's a nice uh little uh cute phrase because it it you know links to our expression of soulmates. And so, right off the bat, I you know, if you can get people chuckling, I think that can be a good way to get them engaged. So I like it for that. I like that it resonates with our term show soulmates. But um you know, showmates implies uh what what a lot of what we've been talking about, which is that uh uh fishes recognize each other as individuals. We haven't explicitly talked about that, but I can tell you that science has supported that. Uh that some fishes recognize humans as individuals even just by our faces. So uh shoalmates requires uh the concept, if if if you know the way I think of it is one individual fish having a particular affinity and connection to one other another individual fish. And uh it could be that as as simple as fishes teaming up to mate once a year or at some point in their life, and it may be they may be relatively uh solitary, and certainly large predatory fishes or predatory fishes of many sizes fit that bill, su sharks and and pelagic uh predators and what have you. But um it when I think of the big schooling species, such as the herrings and the sardines and such, uh I I think uh you know, I see pictures of their schools or I see film of them swimming by in massive, huge numbers, and you think, does does any of them know any of the others? Do they sort of stay with a mini shoal with or mini school within the school? I don't know, and I don't know if anyone studied that, but you gotta figure um, you know, the fact that herrings you know will stop swimming and and they will hang out and they will communicate with with gas bubbles released released from their swim bladders, uh you gotta figure there's there's a lot more going on than just uh I'm just a herring among all these other herring. And the fact that they pair off to mate tells me also there's a lot more going on. So while we may not have as as uh as complex a view of those types of species as we do um, you know, species like moray eels and groupers and surgeon fishes and what have you. Uh, nevertheless, there's probably a lot more going on than we realize.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 50:00

So would it would a shoalmate though only be then someone who's engaged in like those big groups like herrings and stuff? Or would it also be could you call a sunfish and a gull a shoalmate? Uh could you call could you call uh the cleaner, is it called the cleaneress that you you talk about? Um and their clients, would they be shoalmates? Or is it only those who swim together?

Jonathan Balcombe 50:24

Yeah, I mean uh it's funny I was talking about things like herrings because they're probably not the best example we we've already established, that they generally swim in schools, not shoals. So so yes, I I I think it'd be more a more apt example of shoalmates would might be a pair or a trio or more of uh cleaner races who work together day after day as a team on a particular spot on the reef where they service client fish who line up to wait their turn to have parasites removed in exchange for food for the cleaners. Uh, though those fit the bill much more closely to shoalmates. Uh whether sunfishes, for instance, ever sort of identify and recognize and team up with particular gulls, uh, I would I would suspect not because it's probably not often that they're engaging in that interaction and the they swim far and wide and they'd be at different locations, but I don't know for sure. And uh, you know, the the soon this it's so often the case that when we when we think something couldn't be happening, the next thing you find out is animals are actually doing it. So so certain certainly I I did mention uh the the moray eel collaboration with groupers and that that's that's individual specific. That there's there's studies have shown that moray eels uh or I should say groupers will remember a cooperative versus an uncooperative moray eel from the day before, and they will choose the cooperative one over the uncooperative one. So that suggests to me also so showmates of different species.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 51:49

Well, okay, so I'm I'm I'm with you now. We're we're we're looking at individuals making connections with other individuals time and again. They're they're making a concerted effort to be with each other, whether it's for pleasure or work, uh they choose each other.

Jonathan Balcombe 52:03

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 52:06

I see why soulmates and shoalmates is uh quite beautiful now. Uh well, thank you. Thank you so much for all of these these great anecdotes. Uh we're approaching the end now, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity to read a quote. Uh the intention with reading a quote is normally to give uh you know someone an opportunity to either highlight a portion of their work or someone else's work that they think speaks to um either the theme of today's episode or the theme of the season, which is animals and experience.

Jonathan Balcombe 52:36

Well, I appreciate the invitation to share a quote. I I I have one from my book, What a Fish Knows. I it's a it's a short paragraph and not a sentence. Is that acceptable or did you just want a sentence?

Claudia Hirtenfelder 52:46

Nope, that's totally acceptable. Go ahead.

Jonathan Balcombe 52:48

Okay, just to provide a little context, it gets back to what we just mentioned about cleaner client, uh, the cleaner client mutualism where cleaner fishes, cleaner races uh service so-called client fishes of more than a hundred known species on the on the reef, and they remove parasites in exchange for getting some uh the the clients get the spa treatment and the parasite removal service and the cleaners get food. So this is just one paragraph in one aspect of that. Clients are not passive participants. When it is their turn, they approach the cleaning station and hover in place, spreading their fins to help cleaners reach all the nooks and crannies. Some open their mouths and gill covers to allow the usually much smaller cleaners to enter and exit. A cleaner will sometimes butt her snout against fins and gill covers to signal the client to spread them for inspection. Cleaners also vibrate their ventral fins so that they can tap against the host's body in a signal that says, please keep this part of your body still for inspection.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 53:46

What?

Jonathan Balcombe 53:48

Yeah, I like that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 53:50

They're able to tell what? They're able to tell other fish to stay still?

Jonathan Balcombe 53:54

Well, that's that's how we interpret it. You know, that that seems to be what they're doing. Yeah. There's no there's no other really clear interpretation for that behavior.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 54:03

Wow, they're amazing. Uh, where where do you find these uh cleaner ass? Where where are they?

Jonathan Balcombe 54:09

I think uh there's a number of different species around the world, but they're they're pretty widespread. I've I've seen them snorkeling in Hawaii, and I know they they occur in the Red Sea, which is a long way from Hawaii the Hawaii, Hawaii. Uh I'm sure there's there's some, I'm pretty sure there must be some on the Great Barrier Reef, which is also a huge distance away. So I think they're they're fairly cosmopolitan. Uh wouldn't be surprised if they're found on all reefs around the world.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 54:34

I think of reefs as like cities. They are they are like little cities. And now I'm imagining Kinaras going to work each day, and they make their little work teams, and uh and yeah, they're working for a living, and their pay is their food.

Jonathan Balcombe 54:49

It's that's a really nice analogy, the city analogy. And some of these cities are megalopolis is like the Great Barrier Reef, which is uh, you know, tw I forget how long, 2200 miles or something like that. Uh a very huge swath of reef. Um and so it it is quite a good analogy to compare them to cities.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 55:09

Yeah, and and I liked that you brought up work earlier on in the episode because I do think that it starts to, if we kind of remove the idea of money exchange, I think when you start to look at animals and some of what they do with the lens of work and working with others uh as showmates, it starts to really just illuminate the way you think. You see geese walking from a pond to you know to the grass to go and eat, and they do so together. It's it's quite clearly a form of work and working together. It's it's unbelievable. Uh no, it is believable. It's amazing.

Jonathan Balcombe 55:45

Yeah. Yeah, it's another way that we can relate uh their their daily existence. They may not uh think of it as work the way we do, uh, they may not be paid a salary the way we are, hopefully, for our work. Uh, but in terms of uh having things on your list that need to get done that day and going from one place to another to get it done to a better place, say, and uh be coordinating with others of your kind or others of different kinds, there's very strong parallels to the the work and careers of humans and those of other species.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 56:19

And would you say that these are quite like routine when you see fishes engaging in these types of behaviors? Is it, you know, there's a particular time of day and this is when we do, you know, this is when we do this type of work, uh, or does it seem quite random? Uh, you know, in thinking about animals' experiences and shoals, is there structure to the day?

Jonathan Balcombe 56:41

Very much so. Very much a lot of routines, which is not to imply necessarily that it's drudgery, but certainly there's structure to the animal's day, uh, depending on the species. You know, the day may vary more in perhaps for predatory fishes when they may go for days without needing to eat and then they get hungry and they have to have a very different day ahead of them. But um, you know, another relevant concept here is culture, and and culture has been shown to exist in fish populations as well. Culture being defined in this case as uh phenomena, behaviors that are not uh heritable. They're not passed on through the genes, they're passed on through teaching, through observation, through other social forms during the animal's uh life. And uh that's certainly been demonstrated in in fishes as well.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 57:27

Last question. Do you have an example of a really great teacher fish? So a fish story that tells us how fishes teach each other.

Jonathan Balcombe 57:37

Sure. I mean, I could give a I could give an anecdote or I could give a scientific study. Do you do you have a preference?

Speaker 2 57:44

Both. Both?

Jonathan Balcombe 57:47

Well, I'll start out with the the anecdote, um, which uh one can watch YouTube videos that show the same same types of phenomena, and it's the it's the connection and the trust that can be forged between a human and a fish. And uh the one particular example that I relate in my book, although I probably relate more are several. Um in fact I know I do, but certainly this one um was described to me by a woman living in Florida, and she's describing her relationship with her discus fish, which is a popular aquarium fish. Uh I don't like to call them a aquarium fish, popular for aquarium enthusiasts. I don't want to uh I don't want to promote aquariums, actually, but and there's a there's a new film called the uh the um the dark hobby. I had to remember the film that's all about the aquarium trade and the troubles of that. Anyway, back to the point. Uh Jasper was a blue discus fish, and I've met discus fishes, they're very beautiful. And uh he formed quite a connection, quite a quite a bond with uh Karen, his human caregiver. Uh she would go out to work and come home, and when she'd arrive at home, she'd always go straight to the tank and interact with Jasper, who appeared to appreciate that, and they would uh she'd she'd move back and forth in front of the the tank, and Jasper would swim back and forth rapidly uh in unison with her, and uh some from time to time she would cup her hands and put them in the water, a few inches under the water, and Jasper would swim over and and literally swim onto his side where she could use her thumbs to stroke his body to gently caress him, and he clearly liked that. And there's plenty of evidence for fishes uh really enjoying uh the power of touch and getting stress relief from that. So it was a really nice connection with them, and of course it makes it that much harder when they die.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 59:37

Oh, and uh yeah, so Jasper and Karen are shoalmates, they they choose one another. Uh yeah, the the idea of fish coming for cuddles.

Jonathan Balcombe 59:48

Yeah, it's yeah, that's exactly what it is. And you can see film of some some captive fishes who trust the human to pick them up out of the water for a few seconds and while they pet them and then toss them gently back in, and the fish swims back for more. So the fact that they come back for more tells me that they're enjoying it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:00:04

The capacity of other animals to trust sometimes also just uh you would think that by now they would kind of I know that there are many that are wary of us and are constantly wary, but the the ability for trust to form across species uh like that, to be able to be lifted out of the water and be caressed and touched and know that you'll be put back in is just that actually makes me a bit emotional. It's kind of it's what a beautiful idea.

Jonathan Balcombe 1:00:30

Yeah, and it would be very easy to study the the level the the phenomenon of trust in the sense that if you put take another human uh who would perform the same behaviors to solicit uh the interaction, such as cupping the hands and seeing if Jasper swims in. I don't know if Karen ever did that with a friend, uh, but uh it would be interesting to see how Jasper would have responded to someone else. Uh these things are probable. You can you can study them, and I don't know what the science would say on that. It'd be interesting to find out.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:00:58

That would be interesting. Um do you want to give us your scientific example?

Jonathan Balcombe 1:01:02

Sure, because it does actually link to the same the same thing. It actually links to a behavior in this cleaner-client relations where client fishes will sometimes pause from their parasite removal and actually caress uh cleaner clients. Cleaner fishes will caress their clients with their by fluttering their pectoral fins against their skin. Uh, it may be a way to mollify uh clients who are unhappy with some shoddy cleaning treatment, which may include mucus nipping. And that's a whole other part of the uh relationship that gets Machiavellian. Uh, but it the particular study I wanted to mention was with surgeon fishes who were stressed by being put in shallow water. They were caught from the Great Barrier Reef and then stressed. You can measure stress by taking a small blood sample from the tail vein, and uh cortisol levels were very high in these stressed fishes. And then they gave them the opportunity to get stress relief by putting them in a tank with a very realistic model of a cleaner ras. One group of fish were had the opportunity of getting strokes by swimming next to this cleaner ras because the RAS was uh connected to a motor, which caused the model to move back and forth in a gentle sweeping motion. And the other control group, their model RAS was not connected to a motor, so it didn't move. And the difference between the two treatments was striking uh the stressed surgeon fishes who were put in the tank with the move with the mobile RAS model swam up to it uh many, many times during the hour trials, an average of 15 times per hour, and swam next to it so they could get these stress, these strokes, and their stress levels markedly dropped during this period. The control group, where they couldn't get caresses, they ignored the the cleaner RAS model, they didn't touch it once, they averaged zero contacts per hour compared to 15 contacts per hour. And their stress levels didn't drop uh the way the other ones did. So, very to me, a very, very pretty strong demonstration of not just stress stress, of course, but uh the ability to or the wherewithal to seek stress relief and to get stress relief from something that we can relate to, uh a massage or or the power of touch, you know, caressing can be very stress-relieving. We know that from going and getting professional massages, for instance.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:03:17

Or just hugs, getting a hug.

Jonathan Balcombe 1:03:19

Or just hugs, and and then and then the uh I'm happy to say that these sergeant surgeon fishes were released back into their home turfs on the uh Great Barrier Reef following the study.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:03:30

So that is I I know I said the last question was the last question, but there is one more. When you when you meld together some of these stories and scientific experiments, how do you navigate the ethics of this all? Uh you know, some of the experiments you spoke about in the book where research has been done on fish seem you know fairly invasive and and and harmful for for those involved. As a researcher and someone who as a as an author and someone who writes and obviously cares quite deeply about fishes and the ways they experience the world, how do you navigate that tension between using science that's treated them badly, but also found out really important information about how they experience the world?

Jonathan Balcombe 1:04:15

Yeah, uh it's it's a very important question and a bit of a conundrum, uh bit of a challenge. Uh I I usually take pains to inform my readers or my audiences that I don't uh mean to endorse these studies by describing them necessarily. Uh nevertheless, as somebody who's trying to synthesize information and to make a case for a better treatment of a group of animals, in this case fishes, um, I will use whatever tools are out there. And since those studies have already been done and I have no control over they're being done or not, um I uh I will draw from them and uh I may include a disclaimer about I'm not necessarily recommending this this study or or expressing sympathy for the fishes in the study. Nevertheless, uh if their futures can be made more secure by citing these studies and mentioning them and describing them, then I will do that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:05:10

Great. Um I think that's really good. I've I've been contending with some of these on these attentions myself. Uh and yeah, I think that's really uh a great way forward. There's only so much each of us can do, and I think you're doing wonderful work for for fishers and for helping us understand a world uh that was quite murky. Uh so I really encourage anyone to to to head on and get your get your book. Uh before we close, is there anything you'd like to share with folks? Maybe uh you mentioned a book that you're working on or where they could come and find out more about you and the work you do?

Jonathan Balcombe 1:05:48

Uh sure, people can always go to my website, Jonathan Balcom.com, and uh they can find out about my earlier books or my next book, Superfly. They can also sign up for a monthly newsletter called All Things Fish, although it's becoming all things fish and insects, and uh and uh keep in touch that way. So I I encourage people to to pursue these types of information and learn more and uh hopefully improve our relationships with them.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:06:16

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time today, and uh I hope you have a lovely day.

Jonathan Balcombe 1:06:20

Thanks, Claudia. I really enjoyed it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder 1:06:25

Alright, everybody, that is season two, episode eight done. Thank you once again to Jonathan for being a fantastic guest, to Gordon Clark for the bad music, to Jeremy John for the logo, and to Animals and Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics, Apple for sponsoring this podcast. We won't get another episode out this year. Uh I thought I had big dreams that I was gonna have season two done in 2020, but alas, deadlines have been moved and things have shifted. So you'll get the last two episodes in January. For now, I want to wish you a happy end of the year, whatever you're doing, uh big celebrations, happy, happy I hope all of that good stuff. I hope that you get some rest uh too, and I'll check in with you in the new year.

Siobhan O'Sullivan 1:07:12

This is the animal turn with me, Claudia Hertzfelder.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.