
By Jonathan Balcombe
A New York Times Bestseller
Do fishes imagine? Do they truly have three-second stories? and will they realize the people who peer again at them from above the outside of the water? In What a Fish Knows, the myth-busting ethologist Jonathan Balcombe addresses those questions and extra, taking us below the ocean, via streams and estuaries, and to the opposite aspect of the aquarium glass to bare the unbelievable functions of fishes. even supposing there are greater than thirty thousand species of fish―more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined―we not often examine how person fishes imagine, suppose, and behave. Balcombe upends our assumptions approximately fishes, portraying them now not as unfeeling, dead-eyed feeding machines yet as sentient, acutely aware, social, or even Machiavellian―in different phrases, very like us.
What a Fish Knows attracts at the most recent technological know-how to give a clean examine those striking creatures in all their breathtaking range and wonder. Fishes behavior complex courtship rituals and enhance lifelong bonds with shoalmates. additionally they plan, hunt cooperatively, use instruments, curry prefer, lie to each other, and punish wrongdoers. We could think that fishes lead basic, fleeting lives―a mode of life that boils all the way down to a spot at the nutrients chain, rote spawning, and plenty of aimless swimming. yet, as Balcombe demonstrates, in actual fact a ways richer and extra complicated, valuable of the grandest social novel.
Highlighting step forward discoveries from fish fans and scientists world wide and brooding about his personal encounters with fishes, Balcombe examines the attention-grabbing potential through which fishes be taught the areas they inhabit, from shallow tide swimming pools to the inner most reaches of the ocean.
Teeming with insights and fascinating discoveries, What a Fish Knows deals a considerate appraisal of our relations with fishes and evokes us to take a extra enlightened view of the planet’s more and more imperiled marine existence. What a Fish Knows will perpetually switch how we see our aquatic cousins―the puppy goldfish included.