Feeling lockdown blues? Missing your friends and the hangouts? Well, we humans may not be the only ones missing the life before coronavirus pushed it out of gear. The fish at a popular aquarium, which is shut since March, in Australia are showing signs of depression.
The absence of human visitors has caused many fish to become lazy and disinterested. Some of them are even hiding in the dark corners of the tank, the signs that the experts are calling as that of depression.
Experts say that the animals can see outside of the tank and see people and sudden absence of humans might be irking them. The aquarium management are now deciding to hire additional diver to swim with them and keep them company. Fluctuations in serotonin and dopamine, similar to humans when they're depressed, are likely to be causing the depression in the fish.
Since fish resemble humans in terms of neurochemistry, hence making them somewhat sensitive.
Earlier this month, a zoo in Japan noted that the absence of human visitors was stressing out animals in captivity, especially the eels. The zoo authorities then asked humans to video call the eels to give them a sense of normalcy.
Authorities at Tokyo's Sumida Zoo, which has been closed to visitors since March 1, found that after nearly two months of isolation from humans, eels at the zoo had begun to behave oddly. Every time zoo staff or caretakers went past the glass boxes in which the eels were housed, the creatures would burrow into the sand or hide elsewhere.
To fix the problem, zoo authorities initiated a three-day "face-showing fetsival", asking humans to video call the eels to remind them of old times. As per a report in Quartz, the festival began on May 3 with the purpose of reminding the eels of the "existence of humans".
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