Prairie Dragon

It may seem that I digress in this newsletter. In fact, I do not. Dr. R.K. O’Logist is continuing his archaeological dig and has nothing more to report to me for the moment. Miss Longste is steeped in the deciphering of the mysterious language used in The Tiny Book. However, in a sense, following the works of these two great achievers is a digression from my original intent of these papers, albeit diversions that inevitably will help lead to solving my query.

My own research on creature communication and what happened to it has led me to perform a small experiment. For the first time in my life, I bought a fish: a male Beta Siamese-Fighting fish. At the store, the fish was in his own bowl, separated from the others of his kind. I must admit I have spent countless hours watching him.

The first day, the fish was understandably nervous. He spent the day blowing bubbles until he could hardly be found within all the frothy foam he had created. The next morning, he continued to sleep when I turned on the lights. I had to wait a considerable amount of time after opening the top of his aquarium before he finally woke up so I could feed him breakfast. Then, he only ate half the food!

The morning after that, I turned on the lights and opened the top of the aquarium. He woke up right away, although he took his time to come out of his plant that held him while he slept. I guess he’s a slow riser from his bed. In any case, once he got up, he went to the surface and devoured his breakfast.

So it seems I have managed to train him to wake up when there is light after a considerable amount of darkness and eat straight away. Then again, that may be rather presumptuous on my part. Maybe the fish merely readjusted his own schedule to meet mine and he trained me. After all, he doesn’t bring me breakfast.

How does all this help in my research of creature communication, you may ask? Well, it makes me think more. I wonder what the fish is thinking about. I wonder if the fish wonders what I’m thinking.

Surely, you’ve sat in front of an aquarium at one point in your life or another for hours at a time—okay, more likely minutes at a time—watching the fish, just watching, and eventually you started to talk to the fish. You may have even played the finger game where you try to get the fish to follow your finger. I’m sure you’ve even tapped on at least one aquarium to try to get a fish to move, to get its attention. These are indications of attempted creature communication. I must stress the word ”attempts”; when the fish responds in one form or another, you feel exhilarated and happy it understood you, but it also leaves you with a small sense of confusion as to the real intent of the fish, a feeling you try to ignore as much as possible.

Humans change very slowly over time and tend to repeat old behaviours and habits. I suggest that our reactions and behaviour towards fish in aquariums may actually be derivative of an ancient ability now nearly lost forever: the ability to communicate with fish and have fish communicate with us. It goes along with humans having an appendix in which its past usage is unknown to humans, although we all possess one. It goes hand in hand with the functionality of the pineal gland, which humans use less and less, but which is believed to possess our sixth sense; our sixth sense is believed to be connected somehow with surrounding energy frequencies humans cannot detect through sound nor sight and is attributed to the interconnectedness with nature, weather, and spirits, among other things.

If we’re losing the use of the pineal gland and have already lost use of the appendix, it’s highly probable that we have lost the ability to communicate with other non-human creatures. This can only mean that if we lost it, we must have possessed the ability before. Therefore, I am justified in continuing my research on creature communication.

I must point out another part of my fish research. One day, I bought a fish for a friend. I placed it in the only container I had, an old white plastic margarine container. This fish could not see out of his bowl due to the opaque walls. I placed this container beside my own fish. I was astonished by what happened.

My fish, which could see out of his aquarium, could not see what was inside the white container. However, he somehow sensed there was another fish beside him. How do I know? He went straight to work blowing bubbles all over his tank again, creating a frothy nest for him to hide. The other fish did the same.

The next day, my fish’s frothy bubble nest had all popped. He swam about as if all was fine, but he stayed away from the side of his aquarium where I had placed the white container. The fish in the white container slept on the far side, as far away as possible from my fish’s aquarium.

When the new fish woke up, though, my fish approached the white container. The new fish approached my fish’s aquarium. Were they respecting each other’s space during sleep periods and then coming together for a “Hello, did you sleep well?” conversation? How were they communicating? They were in two different containers and couldn’t see each other, but they definitely seemed to be communicating.

It makes me wonder if Siamese-Fighting fish are somewhat telepathic. If so, they may be considerably more intelligent than humans. Would my fish have reacted the same way had I bought a Goldfish or a Feeder fish instead of another Siamese-Fighting fish?

I’d really love to learn more about how fish communicate with each other. If we know how fish communicate, we may be able to learn how to communicate with fish and other creatures once more! Isn’t that the ultimate quest?

Lydia Lavrenik, Editor