#Behavior

[todropscience]

CAN FISH RECOGNIZE INDIVIDUAL HUMANS IN THE WILD?

The ability to recognize individual humans is often associated with mammals and birds, yet research suggests that some fish are also capable of this cognitive feat. While diving in the Mediterranean Sea, a team of scientists observed something intriguing: every field season, they were followed by groups of local fish known as pargo or dorado, stealing food intended to reward other fish in their experiments.

In controlled experiments, wild saddled sea bream (Oblada melanura) and black sea bream (Spondyliosoma cantharus), were trained to follow a human diver to obtain a food reward. Remarkably, they can differentiate between dozens of individuals with high success rates, even when superficial features such as colour or brightness are altered. This suggests that their recognition is based on specific patterns rather than simple visual cues. Similar capabilities have been observed in cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus), which adjust their behaviour depending on whether they recognize a familiar diver, implying that this skill might have adaptive benefits in natural environments.

-Maëlan Tomasek (Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior), one of the study's authors, next to a wild fish. The researchers found that wild fish start to follow humans for food and are able to identify individual divers by their clothing.

If fish in the wild can recognize individual humans, the implications extend beyond academic curiosity. Species frequently interacting with humans—such as those in ecotourism settings or research projects—may learn to associate specific individuals with positive or negative experiences. This has been observed in sharks, where some individuals appear to recognize divers who regularly feed or tag them, approaching more readily or avoiding interactions depending on past encounters. Understanding these cognitive abilities could inform conservation strategies by highlighting the impact of repeated human interactions on fish behaviour.

Despite these insights, much remains unknown about how fish process facial recognition and whether this ability is widespread across different taxa. Future research will need to examine whether this recognition occurs naturally in the wild without training and how it influences social interactions within fish populations. As we continue to challenge outdated assumptions about fish intelligence, it becomes increasingly clear that their cognitive world is far more complex than previously thought.

GIF: Trained fishes following diver

Reference (Open Access): Maëlan et al., 2025. Fish use visual cues to recognize individual divers. Biol. Lett.

[develop-your-oc]

Which OC would eat a rock?

[palatinewolfsblog]

"Capitalism is based on the ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed finite system. In biology such behaviour of cells is called Cancer." - Hugh Culliton.

[unbfacts]

One reason humans find it so hard to achieve happiness is due to "prevalence-induced concept change" — as life improves and bad experiences decrease, your brain starts making less severe experiences feel worse than they would have before.

[myfandomrealitea]

This is going to be an unpleasant truth, but:

People will, and are allowed, to find you or things you do or the way you act annoying or upsetting or unpleasant.

What people are not allowed to do is treat you badly because of those things. But you cannot control the way people feel. You cannot force them to not feel those things.

Its just a fact of life. Everyone has sounds, sensations or things that annoy them or are unpleasant to experience. I can't stand the sound of children crying or screaming. It grates on every single nerve I have.

I'm entitled to feel that way. I can't help feeling that way. I can't just magically not be annoyed by screaming children anymore.

Your tics will irritate some people. Your anger outbursts will be upsetting to some people. Your endless rambling and interrupting or loud voice will be off-putting to some people.

And its perfectly fine. For you and for them.

You are who you are. Who you are will co-exist with some people and not with others. You deserve the opportunity to be authentic and the right to be comfortable, but so do other people, and people who put respectful distance between you and them are not being cruel.

[antisocialsharky]

ASPD Affects More Than Just Behavior

I spent some time in the disorder related subreddits (big mistake, I know) and stumbled upon the following comment:

"ASPD shouldn't be a personality disorder diagnosis, its just bad behavior and has nothing to do with personality"

Lets get into why that is absolute bullshit, shall we?

1. ASPD is more than just behavior. While no diagnostic mannual is able to describe the whole range of experiences that fall under a diagnostic label, even the DSM-5, with its very behavior heavy criteria, manages it to get that point across. You'll find mentions of a "lack of remorse", "irritability & aggressiveness" and "disregard for the safety of self or others" in the main criteria.

The "associated features supporting diagnosis" section, mentions the following additional traits, that could be seen as not strictly behavioral in nature: lack of empathy, inflated & arrogant self appraisal, glib/superficial charm, inability to tolerate boredom and depressed mood.

The proposed alternative ASPD criteria (that is not used for diagnosis, but is used to understand the condition) describes these traits: egocentrism, absence of prosocial inner standards, lack of remorse, lack of concern for others, incapacity for mutually intimate relationships, callousness, persistent/frequent angry feelings, boredom proneness, lack of concern for ones limitations, denial of the reality of personal danger and lack of respect for promises & aggreements.

All of those traits are not strictly behavioral, but have something to do with ones emotional state and thought patterns. Its the basis, that provokes and influences behavior sure, but claiming that ASPD is nothing beyond that behavior is ridiculous.

2. The definition of a personality seems to be along the lines of being "a characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving" or "any person's collection of interrelated behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns that comprise a person’s unique adjustment to life". Everyone will have their personal definition, but this does overlap with how the DSM-5 defines a personality and thus defines the areas in which a personality is seen as disordered (whether you are a fan of that concept or not).

As mentioned above, theres a lot of evidence in the criteria that ASPD is not just comprised of "disordered behavior", but also "disordered emotions" and "disordered thought patterns". Or, if you prefer to think of it this way, you could say that ASPD affects all three areas in a way that disables the individual.

Now, a very interesting part of the personality definition is the "unique adjustment to life" part and that brings me to my next point.

3. A personality disorder is caused by a mix of different factors, but most often includes a genetic and an environmental factor. This environmental factor usually has something to do with trauma and/or adjusting to a difficult life situation.

And oh damn would you look at that...its almost as if ASPD, as a personality disorder, is a unique way of adjusting to that difficult life situation, which totally overlaps with the definition of a personality. Shocker...

All sillyness aside, ASPD is a deeply ingrained pattern that forms as a way of surviving & being able to deal with what life throws at you. Its not superficial, its not just behavior. It influences everything. You can think of it as a liquid, that seeps into the smallest crevices of your brain and sticks to the walls and refuses to leave again.

The fact that ASPD is so often singled out, as being "just bad behavior" is no mistake of course. Its due to stigma and the way in which people view antisocial traits as bad & undesirable (tho the same could be said for all other PDs in one way or another). It proves yet again, how little some people know about the subject and how much more awareness is needed.

Some part of the blame, probably lies with the behavioral focus in the DSM-5 main criteria, which is often the only one people learn about! Many do not bother looking beyond and learning about the condition from the people who have it, or explore what it simply is in the end: an adjustment of personality that just made sense/was essential and cannot be entirely reversed again (and the argument could be made, that it shouldn't have to be reversed).

Let me quickly dive into some personal examples at the end, to make the whole thing a bit more graspable:

• ASPD is more than just behavior, because if I see someone cry because they hurt themselves, I cannot feel with them and I do not feel any desire to help them. I will think about them as weak and annoying, I will secretly hope that they just stop so I don't have to deal with it and I will have to work hard to keep the annoyance that I feel off my face. The behavioral part will be what I do about it. Do I get up, turn around and walk away? Or do I sit down and comfort them and try to help, even if it entirely goes against any emotion I feel & any thoughts I have?

• ASPD is more than just behavior, because if someone just so happens to bump into me in public, I will feel anger. I will be furious, curse words will run trough my head and my brain will play trough multiple scenarios of revenge and reactions that would be satisfying to me. I will think every negative thing under the sun, I will feel every bit of rage, disdain and annoyance. But the behavioral part is what I do about it. Do I let my aggression out and make that persons day as miserable as they just made mine? Or do I wave it off, smile and go on, even if everything inside me wants to claw its way trough their face?

first posted on my instagram (same @)

[existennialmemes]

Our carceral society isn't ready to hear this, but punishment doesn't really work, especially not on it's own. Really, empirically speaking, punishment is a profoundly ineffective means of modifying someone's behavior long term.

Whether we're talking about children or prisoners or whoever, punishment rarely achieves the desired goal, and frequently causes a host of other negative consequences instead.

You know what works? Positive reinforcement. But that's less satisfying to the egos of authority (whether it's parents or the state apparatus) so this method is typically reserved for dogs.

[frame-narrative]

[minsungincorrectquotes]

Chan, to Minho and Jisung: You both have been very well behaved today Chan: What did you do?

[serialport0]

The concept of antisocial behavior is strange. Are you telling me that you're spending the energy you have now in ways that destroy your opportunities to give or receive energy in the future? This seems like a losing strategy.

If you're so smart, why aren't you prosocial? Why haven't you realized that connection is the best part of life? And missing out on it is like missing the whole vibe.

[unbfacts]

Orcas, apex predators, do not see humans as prey and are often docile. No modern fatalities caused by wild orcas have been recorded.

[sammsays]

been thinking about a behavioral pattern recently that I've been calling (in lieu of knowing some official name) reactive vs proactive lying

most people don't like lying and most people try to minimize negative feelings as much as possible, so they do as little of a bad thing as they can. even further, most people like to feel as if they did not have pre-meditation of something bad happening, so very little do they plan for situations where they would need to do such a thing

this leads to reactive lying being the default for most people when faced with a situation when they feel like they should.

this is often how people who largely do white lies operate especially.

a common example is when someone doesn't care about a topic that their friend is passionate about.

it is reasonable to not want to tell them that they don't care, so the liar is likely to be agreeable but in a way different than their usual behavior.

while passionate about something with someone else, people most often are content-specific in their agreement (speaking to the specific things they like and dislike).

when someone is lying, they tend to just affirm the other person with a short "yeah" or something similar. the lie is kept as low-effort as possible while still protecting their friend's feelings.

proactive lying would be, in that scenario, anticipating what your friend enjoys about the topic and emulating your regular behavior to mask it as much as possible.

proactive lying is doing precisely that in any scenario, creating as airtight and comprehensive a lie as possible, often anticipating your own and the other person's thoughts while doing so.

this is something that generally goes against the regular operation of the mind, so something needs to happen to someone (regularly enough) to make it a core part of their behavior.

the most common patterns ive seen for people who are proactive liars are that they come from overly harsh authoritarian households and that they have a tendency to emotionally suppress. they also tend to have high self-awareness (as is a requirement to know with specificity how they act) and conflict-avoidant behavior, as these lies are most often ways to do exactly that.

proactive liars tend to know when reactive liars are lying, but whether they reveal that information depends on the context and person. sometimes just going with the lie can make the other person feel good, regardless of their success.

proactive liars can be hard to read in general and especially when they're lying, but often with enough time getting to know someone, you can pick up tells and even just intuition.

the third category is a "compulsive truther" as coined by my friend, someone who almost never lies no matter the scenario. this can happen for a number of reasons but i don't feel comfortable speaking confident about the whole of it.

principles, anxiety, shame responses, and even someone's personal self-mythos can all apply, but plenty more can as well (and any of these can and often do have no part of it).

anyways, id love to hear thoughts from others about this!

[diana-andraste]

[mandrake-mistakes]

My favorite part of Hunger games AU fanfic where Prim is alive (for me it’s usually never reaped AUs but I know there are others floating aboot) is how everyone agrees that Prim is the NUMBER ONE Everlark shipper

[frawstedcreations]

NEW PRODUCT ALERT!

KidCoins! We needed an easy way to reward our kids for positive behavior. We originally had a verbal agreement of "stars". If your child gets up and ready for school in the morning without trouble, they'd earn a star. After 5 stars, they get a trip to the dollar store.

I swooped in made made physical coins with stars on them. We offer small and big stars! In our home, a small star is worth $0.25, or 15 minutes of screen time, and a big coin is 4x that. We reward with stuff like chores and excellent behavior. And use ONE color per child, so they can't steal or trade without parental help.

The piggy banks are made in white, so that they can personally decorate them if desired, ours loved this idea!

Get yours here: https://frawstedcreations.etsy.com/listing/4304070435