01.04.2025 Redouan Bshary

Abstact: There is huge variation in vertebrate brain size and organization. For example, the average mammal has a 10 times larger brain than the average fish of the same size. We currently do not understand well what mammals can do with the extra computing power. I will illustrate this point with a concrete example on our main study species, the cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus. After a brief introduction to the species, I will show data on an experimental paradigm in which these fish outperform various mammals, including chimpanzees. We used modelling to show that the underlying mechanisms are rather complex, involving chaining and configurational learning. These results are hopefully interesting for linguists, as key mechanisms used in human language apparently exist in a fish but are used in a foraging context.