Lab-Fish Behavior: Fill & Download for Free

Cats are very subtle creatures.If you think your cat is ill, it is and it needs care quickly.Because cats are prey animals (yes, they are also predators), they are very good at hiding illness so that they don’t look like easy prey. It is an innate behavior, meaning it is a hardwired, instinctive reaction. Once a cat starts to really look or act ill, it is usually critically ill.Pay attention to the small changes of behavior. If your cat doesn’t want its usual food, it is probably not being picky. It is more likely that it is nauseated and is having an aversion to the food it is associating with feeling bad.If your cat starts sleeping in out of the way places, it is likely ill and needs to see a vet ASAP.A thorough physical exam by a veterinarian who is knowledgeable in feline medicine is needed.2. Get check ups for your cat an absolute minimum of yearly. Every 6 months is even better. Good physical exams and timely lab work will catch most diseases and illnesses before they become critical and need thousands of dollars of treatment. It will save you money and may save your cat’s life.3. Feed your cat a good diet that is high in protein (at least 33% dry matter or 10% canned animal source) that is free of white-fleshed ocean fish, beef and gluten.Inflammatory bowel disease is the number one disease I see in cats older than 9 years of age. Avoid inflammatory foods.4. Kidney disease is not a death sentence if it is diagnosed early and managed well with blood pressure checks and urine cultures at least yearly. Do not feed low protein kidney diets before a cat is in late stage 3 kidney disease. Manage calcium and phosphate levels with calcitriol and phosphate binders.5. Cats should live to be between 16 and 20 years old. Dentistry is needed through their entire life.6. Age is not a disease or anesthesia risk. Anesthesia for dentistry is much less of a risk than infection and kidney damage from dental disease. Ask questions about the anesthesia protocol, but if your vet says your cat is too old to anesthesthetize, find a new vet. There are protocols that are safe, even for debilitated pets.I could go on, but this is a discussion that is good to have with a great veterinarian of your choosing that is tailored to your cat.Just remember to listen to your instincts and watch for sudden changes in your cat’s behavior. Your vet will thank you and your cat will too.

A fish biologist is called an Icthyologist. Icthyology is the study of fishIchthyology - WikipediaIchthyology (from Greek: ἰχθύς, ikhthys, "fish"; and λόγος, logos, "study"), also known as fish science, is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. This includes bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). While many species have been discovered, around 250 new species are officially described each year. According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of October 2016.How to Become an IchthyologistWhat Does an Ichthyologist Do?Ichthyologists dedicate their time to studying different kinds of fish species, though many will focus on one family of fish in particular. They generally focus on the biological history, behavior, growth patterns, and ecological importance of these fish. Most Ichthyologists will go into the field to collect various samples or observe fish behavior, before returning to a lab or office to analyze their collected data. If funded by a university, many of these scientists may be required to teach in addition to their other duties. Some of these scientists may also dedicate their time to educating others about the field and advocating for the importance of fish to ecosystems.

I spent many years of my life being exactly that, an ethologist, however, I did spend quite a bit of that time packaging and repackaging my research for granting agencies as anything but ethology. It was extremely interesting and depending on the kinds of questions you're interested in answering you can really pick the model system perfectly suited to your questions.I worked almost exclusively with fish and I spent many hours both in the lab and in the field observing their behavior. My goal was to figure out what they were actually doing in real life and then bring that back to the lab where I could reduce the question down to a series of forced choice paradigms and then apply my modern neuroscience techniques throughout those experiments. I became extremely well tuned to their behavior and by the end, I could almost make them do exactly what I wanted by simply tweeking a couple of bits of stimulus. With this there were good days and bad.I remember one experiment where I was teaching animals to swim through a maze where the proper escape path was uncued. This required the animals to discover the path by trial and error. When I was working with naive animals, I often spent hours (yes hours) in a basement room, heated to Zambian daytime temperature, with no windows, watching fish swim randomly in their tank with no success. I managed to use my pheripheral vision to monitor the fish and I read the entire twilight series of books in a 1 month time. It was DEADLY boring, However, when they did eventually stumble upon the solution, they would perform the task really quickly and that was super rewarding.I really, really loved my work and it allowed me to explore any aspect of behavior that I was interested in but in the end, its applicability and attractiveness to people outside the field was limited. Everybody loved to hear about my research because it was intrinsically interesting. What I would recommend is to find an applied set of questions to ask in the cognitive and neuroscience domain and then add a little interesting behavioral twist to them. This way, you can find excellent sources of funding for your research but still be stimulated as a researcher.