Fife-Cook Isabel, Franks Becca
Department of Environmental Studies, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
Animals (Basel). 2021 Mar 5;11(3):706. doi: 10.3390/ani11030706.
The study of human-animal interactions has provided insights into the welfare of many species. To date, however, research has largely focused on human relationships with captive mammals, with relatively little exploration of interactions between humans and other vertebrates, despite non-mammals constituting the vast majority of animals currently living under human management. With this study, we aimed to address this gap in knowledge by investigating human-fish interactions at a community garden/aquaponics learning-center that is home to approximately 150 goldfish () and seven adult and two juvenile koi (). After a habituation period (July-September 2019) during which time the fish were regularly provided with the opportunity to engage with the researcher's submerged hand, but were not forced to interact with the researcher, we collected video data on 10 non-consecutive study days during the month of October. This procedure produced 18~20-min interaction sessions, 10 during T1 (when the experimenter first arrived and the fish had not been fed) and eight during T2 (20-30 min after the fish had been fed to satiation; two sessions of which were lost due equipment malfunction). Interactions between the researcher and the seven adult koi were coded from video based on location (within reach, on the periphery, or out of reach from the researcher) and instances of physical, tactile interaction. Analyses revealed that overall, koi spent more time than expected within reach of the researcher during both T1 ( < 0.02) and T2 ( < 0.03). There were also substantial differences between individuals' overall propensity for being within-reach and engaging in physical interaction. These results show that koi will voluntarily interact with humans and that individual koi display unique and consistent patterns of interaction. By providing quantitative data to support anecdotal claims that such relationships exist around the world, this research contributes to the ongoing discoveries highlighting the profound dissonance between how humans think about and treat fish and who fish actually are, thereby emphasizing the necessity of stronger moral and legal protections for fishes.
对人类与动物互动的研究为许多物种的福利提供了见解。然而，迄今为止，研究主要集中在人类与圈养哺乳动物的关系上，尽管非哺乳动物构成了目前在人类管理下生活的绝大多数动物，但对人类与其他脊椎动物之间互动的探索相对较少。通过这项研究，我们旨在通过调查一个社区花园/鱼菜共生学习中心的人类与鱼类互动来填补这一知识空白，该中心饲养了约150条金鱼（）以及七条成年锦鲤和两条幼年锦鲤（）。在适应期（2019年7月至9月），在此期间定期让鱼有机会与研究人员浸入水中的手接触，但不强迫它们与研究人员互动，我们在10月的10个不连续研究日收集了视频数据。这个过程产生了18至20分钟的互动时段，T1阶段（实验者刚到时且鱼未喂食）有10次，T2阶段（鱼喂饱后20至30分钟；其中两次因设备故障丢失）有8次。根据位置（在研究人员可触及范围内、在周边或超出研究人员可触及范围）以及身体触觉互动情况，从视频中对研究人员与七条成年锦鲤之间的互动进行编码。分析表明，总体而言，在T1（<0.02）和T2（<0.03）期间，锦鲤在研究人员可触及范围内花费的时间比预期的更多。个体在可触及范围内以及进行身体互动的总体倾向之间也存在显著差异。这些结果表明锦鲤会自愿与人类互动，并且个体锦鲤表现出独特且一致的互动模式。通过提供定量数据来支持世界各地存在此类关系的传闻说法，这项研究有助于正在进行的发现，突出了人类对鱼类的看法和对待方式与鱼类实际情况之间的深刻矛盾，从而强调了加强对鱼类道德和法律保护的必要性。
