How does color affect fish feeding behavior?
Our Experiment
Humans are greatly affected by their surroundings, like color. We wanted to see if the same applied for fish. We were inspired by Jaime K. White’s study on training fish to recognize faces during feeding. This suggests that our fish will be able to associate color during feeding as well. For our experiment we conducted a dichotomous choice test using the colors red and yellow. What significance does this project have? As humans, we are complex. Fish, on the other hand, are thought as simple. We want to test our fish in a way that would reflect on there brain capacity rather than test there physical features.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis - The fish will spend more time in a three inch radius of the red color than the yellow color.
Null Hypothesis - There is no difference in the amount of time the fish will spend in a three inch radius of the red or yellow color.
Alternate Hypothesis - The fish will spend more time in a three inch radius of the yellow color than the red color.
Null Hypothesis - There is no difference in the amount of time the fish will spend in a three inch radius of the red or yellow color.
Alternate Hypothesis - The fish will spend more time in a three inch radius of the yellow color than the red color.
Variables
Independent Variables: The amount of food per feeding
Dependent Variables: Number of times the fish swam within the three inch radius of either color
Controlled Variables: Water quality, amount of food fed, light exposure, consistency of the feeder
Dependent Variables: Number of times the fish swam within the three inch radius of either color
Controlled Variables: Water quality, amount of food fed, light exposure, consistency of the feeder
Methods
- First Week:
- Introducing the red color first to the fish
- Putting up just the red folder
- Then putting in the red square attached to the popsicle stick while they were feeding
- This helped with introducing the color so in the following week they're familiar with it
2. Now time to introduce the yellow color to the fish. How we did this:
- Putting both yellow and red folders on the outside of the tank to avoid human visibility
- Both popsicle sticks were inserted into their corresponding sides. The red popsicle stick was dipped in flake feed for the first two tests. This way, the fish could associate red with food.
- The following two tests, the red popsicle stick was inserted into the tank on its own.
- For the following text we put in both the red and yellow popsicle sticks
Photos Of Our Process
Results
Animal Behaviorist Observations/Notes During the Experiment
Discussion
After associating the red color during feeding for one week, we started our experiment. The fish gravitated towards the red color a total of 101 times all together. The total gravitation in the yellow color was 10 times. Our data supports our initial hypothesis because the fish swam within a three inch radius of the red color more than the yellow color. Some potential confounding variables that may have impacted the experiment include:
New questions that arose from conducting this experiment include:
- Temperature (not measured)
- Change in fish numbers
- Deaths and necessary acclimation
- Light
- Light effects color visibility underwater for fish
- Inconsistent time of feeding
- Human visibility
- Making sure we associate the red color when feeding not ourselves
New questions that arose from conducting this experiment include:
- How does human visibility and light affect fish feeding behavior?
- Does time of day affect fish feeding behavior? If so, how?
- We could test by controlling the visibility of the human being to the fish, the wavelengths of light, and time of day during feeding.