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If you follow the blog, you’ve probably read posts about cichlid enrichment, something I am big proponent of. Fish enrichment considerations are a natural extension of a larger focus, fish welfare. As a hobbyist who is sensitive to my fishes’ wellbeing, fish welfare studies involving aquarium fish are of great interest to me. Earlier this year, I was searching for some articles on fish welfare and I came across the work of today’s interviewee.
I have posted numerous times about cichlid play and enrichment. However, my last post about play was almost a year ago (2024). Interestingly enough, that post also involved the same species here – Julidochromis dickfeldi.
On the evening of June 27th, I purposely arranged some marbles on top of a piece of travertine tile in one of my Julidochromis dickfeldi species only tanks (see photo above). I use these flat, glass marbles for stacking travertine tile to create additional refuges for fry and juveniles.
Sticking with the cichlids and play theme, I ran across another scholarly article published last month that investigated fish and play. Though the study didn’t focus on cichlids, of the 66 fish species in the study, there were a handful of cichlid species included.
If you recall the post from April in which I revisited a previous post on cichlids and play, you’ll remember I pointed out that one of the two cichlids in my 40g breeder was moving pebbles. This is a weekly thing. Each week when I do maintenance on the tank, I put all of the pebbles that appear in the sand back in the pebble section behind the rock wall. And each week, there are inevitably five or six pebbles that end up back in the sand.
Permit me to anthropomorphize with this post. So, I don’t necessarily believe in animal “happiness” and other emotions, as we (humans) define them. However, I do believe that animals can reach a state of contentedness, just as they can a state of excitement.
Everyone probably agrees that part of the allure of keeping cichlids is the diversity of their behavior.
I have a breeding pair of Telmatochromis temporalis in a 20g long. The tank contains several ceramic tubes and a single ceramic cave. The female spends most of her time in the cave.
This is an interesting question. The short answer is yes, no, and maybe. Since anthropomorphizing is generally frowned upon by the scientific community, the subjectivity of the word “play” becomes more acute. If we assume that behavior we observe in other species occurs under the same motivation as our own, then applying our own term for it is less problematic. However, now the word “motivation” becomes an issue. So just think of the terms “stimulus and reward,” and let’s move on.
Do you own Tropheus duboisi? If so, you might be interested to know that a team of researchers has recently concluded that the species does play. If you can get your hands on a copy of the article “Highly Repetitive Object Play in a Cichlid Fish (Tropheus duboisi),” give it a read. It’s pretty fascinating.
In fact, the lead author, Gordon Burghardt, has outlined in the article his five criteria for defining play:
1. The behavior is incompletely functional in the behavioral context in which it is expressed
2. The behavior is voluntary, spontaneous, or rewarding
3. The behavior differs from ethotypic functional versions in form, targeting, or ontogenetic timing
4. The behavior is repeated with some regularity, but is not rigidly (pathologically) stereotyped
5. The behavior is initiated in the absence of severe chronic stress such as disease, crowding, hunger, and predation
Interestingly enough, according to the authors, at the time of the article T. duboisi was the only cichlid species to have been studied and display behavior that met the “play” criteria above.
Citations:
Burghardt, G. M. 2011: Defining and recognizing play. In: Oxford Handbook of the Development of Play (Pellegrini, A. D., ed.). Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 9-18
Burghardt, G. M., Dinets, V. and Murphy, J. B. (2015), Highly Repetitive Object Play in a Cichlid Fish. Ethology, 121: 38–44. doi:10.1111/eth.12312.