When you think about fish, it's probably at dinnertime. Author
Jonathan Balcombe, on the other hand, spends a lot of time pondering the
emotional lives of fish. Balcombe, who serves as the director of animal
sentience for the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy,
tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that humans are closer to understanding fish than ever before.
"Thanks to the breakthroughs in ethology, sociobiology, neurobiology and ecology, we can now better understand what the world looks like to fish," Balcombe says.
In his new book, What A Fish Knows: The Inner Lives Of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents evidence that fish have a conscious awareness — or "sentience" — that allows them to experience pain, recognize individual humans and have memory. He argues that humans should consider the moral implications of how we catch and farm fish.
"We humans kill between 150 billion and over 2 trillion fishes a year. ... And the way they die — certainly in commercial fishing — is really pretty grim, " Balcombe says. "There's a lot of change that would be needed to reflect an improvement in our relationship with fishes."
- Full interview with Jonathan Balcombe here
"Thanks to the breakthroughs in ethology, sociobiology, neurobiology and ecology, we can now better understand what the world looks like to fish," Balcombe says.
In his new book, What A Fish Knows: The Inner Lives Of Our Underwater Cousins, Balcombe presents evidence that fish have a conscious awareness — or "sentience" — that allows them to experience pain, recognize individual humans and have memory. He argues that humans should consider the moral implications of how we catch and farm fish.
"We humans kill between 150 billion and over 2 trillion fishes a year. ... And the way they die — certainly in commercial fishing — is really pretty grim, " Balcombe says. "There's a lot of change that would be needed to reflect an improvement in our relationship with fishes."
- Full interview with Jonathan Balcombe here
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