prolog

Part 1.
Misconceptions about fish
Chapter 1: Don't judge fish rashly.

Part 2.
Fish senses
Chapter 2: The Fish's Vision
Chapter 3 Hearing, Smell, and Taste
Chapter 4 Other Senses: Navigation, Electroreception, EOD, and Touch

Part 3.
The feeling of fish
Chapter 5: Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition
Chapter 6: Fear, Stress, Pleasure, Play, and Curiosity

Part 4.
Fish's thoughts
Chapter 7 Intelligence and Learning
Chapter 8: Using Tools, Planning

Part 5.
Social life of fish
Chapter 9: We Must Unite to Survive
Chapter 10: The Social Contract
Chapter 11: Cooperation, Democracy, and Peacekeeping

Part 6.
Fish breeding
Chapter 12 Sex Life
Chapter 13 Parenting Styles

Part 7.
fish out of water
Chapter 14: A Fish Out of Water

Epilogue
Americas
Search

Are you a primitive animal with a memory of only three seconds and no pain or tears?

There are more species of animals than mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined, accounting for 60% of vertebrates. They appeared on Earth 530 million years ago, long before humans, and have continued to evolve.
It is a fish that lives in water, the largest habitat on Earth.
But fish are animals of 'misunderstanding'.
Of course, birds are also misunderstood animals with the derogatory term 'bird brain' attached to them, but they are nothing compared to fish.
Why is that? The famous writer D.
H. Lawrence said this in his poem “Fish”:
Fish “make no sound and do not touch each other.
“They don’t speak, they don’t tremble, they don’t even get angry.” This poem very well represents our misunderstanding about fish.
Fish are labeled not only as stupid, lacking in perception, but also as cold-blooded animals that do not know pain or tears.
Fish were animals that did not evoke any sympathy from humans.


The author shatters these human prejudices.
It vividly depicts the sensory world of fish, including sight, smell, touch, and taste, that surpasses imagination, the perception of fish that surpasses that of any other primate, the dynamics of fish society that are reminiscent of human society, and the desperate lives of fish that strike a blow against anthropocentrism.
The bottom line is that fish are smarter animals than we thought, they are not primitive animals that stopped evolving long ago, but highly evolved creatures, and they are our 'cousins' who are very similar to us humans.

How do fish see the world?

How do fish perceive the world? Do they think? Do they feel pain? Is there a social structure among fish? This book answers these questions, which everyone has likely pondered at least once, based on the latest scientific research.
Various experiments that allow us to understand the sensory world of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and geomagnetism not only show us well how fish view the world, but also show that fish demonstrate the ability to learn and remember, recognize objects, play, use tools, and cooperate through the surprising behaviors of fish discovered by numerous scientists over the past 100 years or so since scientific research on fish began in earnest.
Research on fish emotions, including stress, fear, pain, pleasure, play, curiosity, fun, sex, and parenting, shows that fish also have emotions, and that "emotions" are not as unique in their evolutionary history as humans might think.
Of course, the book also includes anecdotal observations from various people, many of which have not been scientifically verified, interspersed with scientific facts.
Although these anecdotal observations lack academic credibility, the author believes they can motivate biologists to conduct research at a time when countless fish remain unstudied and shrouded in mystery.

Fish are a lot more similar to humans than we think!

Just as terrestrial animals are surrounded by the atmosphere, fish live surrounded by water.
The density of water is 800 times greater than that of air and it is incompressible.
This environment made it possible for fish to develop their own unique evolutionary mechanisms.
The reason fish have small brains, flat fins instead of hands or feet, and streamlined bodies is because they live in an underwater environment.
Therefore, we should not judge a fish by its relatively small brain or lack of hands.
The author calls for a departure from this brain-centered and anthropocentric perspective.
When we move away from anthropocentrism, fish appear in a new way.
The author says this:
“The crucial reason why we cannot empathize with fish is because we play in different waters.
“The reason a fish doesn’t cry when it’s pulled out of the water on a fishhook is the same reason we don’t cry when we’re drowning.”

If we humans live for 1 second on Earth, fish are animals that have lived on Earth for over 4 minutes.
Moreover, only 5% of the world's oceans, where fish still remain unknown to humans, have been explored to date.
Therefore, there is ample reason to turn our attention to fish, which still remain unknown creatures, to change our perception, and to reassert their moral rights.