Fish Have Feelings Too!
Hey guys, Tyrone here! I’m feeling down lately because I’ve been dealing with bullying a lot, especially from Burt. So, I’ve been trying to figure out how I should act when he inevitably decides to be mean to me again. Fortunately, the scientists in the lab care about my behavior and want to figure out what makes a fish susceptible or resilient to bullies like Burt! To cheer myself up, today I want to tell you all about the fun way the scientists study my behavior after repeatedly being bullied in a resident-intruder experiment (if you don’t remember the details check out my previous blog posts about this!). The scientists start with videos of these experiments to quantify our behavior. They specifically want to see how the intruder (like me, Tyrone) reacts to aggression from the resident (like Burt). By using a cool program called BORIS (which stands for B ehavioral O bservation R esearch I nteractive S oftware) they are able to see just how often and for how long we display certa