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Sunday, June 25, 2006

Selfless, sensitive, altruistic? It's the cleaner fish

FISH are displaying random acts of kindness in the laboratory. A new study finds that some fish are altruistic simply because they want to earn a good reputation.

University of Queensland researchers say that until now only humans have been thought capable of acts that do not directly benefit themselves.

Dr Lexa Grutter said the interaction between cleaner fish and client fish is a well-known symbiotic relationship in which cleaner fish remove parasites from client fish. However, some cleaner fish are cheats and only remove mucus, which they prefer.

In the study, cleaner fish that were more trustworthy were sought out by client fish who wanted to avoid exploitation, she said. "Our research shows complicated behaviours in cleaner fish, where the benefit of co-operation was not reciprocated directly but instead gave them a good reputation," Dr Grutter said.

"This may be the important intermediate step to the more complex form of indirect reciprocity that humans are able to play, where each act is altruistic."


...from smh

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