[Lance]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I don't think that the fish we keep are swimming around in their tanks, waxing poetic for the days when they swam free on the reef. Fish have behaviours that they can and need to exhibit. If we put them in a circumstance where they are unable to exhibit those behaviours, they will probably get stressed out, but they're not going to be thinking about it. The best we can do is to try and replicate their environment as best we can, but if we can't, the fish is not going to have a complex emotional response and sulk while it thinks about what it would rather be doing. The fish we keep react to stimuli and conditioning, that's pretty much it.
If there is a problem with the environment they are in, the fish will react negatively. They will get overly aggressive, or they'll stop eating, or they'll get sick. If they're not doing any of those things, there's a good chance it's emotional state is as level as it would be anywhere else it wasn't getting eaten.

Bingo! That's what I was trying to say! Well, I did say it, just not nearly as well.