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Recognition of partly occluded objects by fish

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Abstract

The ability to visually complete partly occluded objects (so-called “amodal completion”) has been documented in mammals and birds. Here, we report the first evidence of such a perceptual ability in a fish species. Fish (Xenotoca eiseni) were trained to discriminate between a complete and an amputated disk. Thereafter, the fish performed test trials in which hexagonal polygons were either exactly juxtaposed or only placed close to the missing sectors of the disk in order to produce or not produce the impression (to a human observer) of an occlusion of the missing sectors of the disk by the polygon. In another experiment, fish were first trained to discriminate between hexagonal polygons that were either exactly juxtaposed or only placed close to the missing sectors of a disk, and then tested for choice between a complete and an amputated disk. In both experiments, fish behaved as if they were experiencing visual completion of the partly occluded stimuli. These findings suggest that the ability to visually complete partly occluded objects may be widespread among vertebrates, possibly inherited in mammals, birds and fish from early vertebrate ancestors.

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Acknowledgments

All the experiments reported comply with the guidelines for the ethical treatment of animals in behavioral research and teaching (Animal Behaviour 2003) and with current European Community and Italian laws.

We wish to thank Professor Giorgio Vallortigara for reading and commenting on this manuscript, Dr Marco Dadda for technical help with the apparatus, Paola Cicia and Alice Perseghin for help with training the animals, and three anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Via Venezia, 8, 35131, Padova, Italy

    Valeria Anna Sovrano & Angelo Bisazza

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  1. Valeria Anna Sovrano
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  2. Angelo Bisazza
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Correspondence to Valeria Anna Sovrano.

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Sovrano, V.A., Bisazza, A. Recognition of partly occluded objects by fish. Anim Cogn 11, 161–166 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-007-0100-9

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