Speaker
Description
Most of the studies on the cognitive abilities of fish focused on models organisms adopted in behavioural neuroscience. To date, little attention has been devoted to characiformes fish and we record a lack of cognitive investigation on the piranha. In the present study, we aimed to assess whether red-bellied piranhas (Pygocentrus nattereri) can solve an automated operant conditioning task like the one used with mammals, birds, and other fish. Subjects underwent two colour discrimination tasks: first, fish were required to discriminate between red and green; second, fish had to discriminate between white and yellow. We found no evidence of learning capacities after extensive training exceeding one thousand trials overall. This preliminary observation suggests that piranhas may be limited in their capacity to cope with automated operant conditioning devices. We call for a further investigation of learning abilities in characiformes fish.
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