Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see

Katherine McAuliffe; Lindsey A Drayton; Amanda Royka; Mélisande Aellen; Laurie R Santos; Redouan Bshary

doi:10.1038/s42003-021-02584-2

Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see

Commun Biol. 2021 Sep 30;4(1):1127. doi: 10.1038/s42003-021-02584-2.

Authors

Katherine McAuliffe¹, Lindsey A Drayton², Amanda Royka², Mélisande Aellen³, Laurie R Santos², Redouan Bshary³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA. mcaulikg@bc.edu.
² Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
³ Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Abstract

Much of human experience is informed by our ability to attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as theory of mind. While evidence for theory of mind in animals to date has largely been restricted to primates and other large-brained species, the use of ecologically-valid competitive contexts hints that ecological pressures for strategic deception may give rise to components of theory of mind abilities in distantly-related taxonomic groups. In line with this hypothesis, we show that cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) exhibit theory of mind capacities akin to those observed in primates in the context of their cooperative cleaning mutualism. These results suggest that ecological pressures for strategic deception can drive human-like cognitive abilities even in very distantly related species.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Cognition*
Feeding Behavior*
Female
Fishes / physiology*
Male
Symbiosis*