As It Happens Can fish feel pleasure? Scientists say yes, and they might even crave it

If you're asked to picture a creature having the time of its life, a fish probably isn't the first animal that comes to mind.

But new research is challenging that perception, suggesting that some fish not only seek out pleasurable experiences but may even remember and crave them.

"Most people think of fish as almost like an inferior vertebrate," Marta Soares, a behavioural physiologist at the University of Porto in Portugal told host Nil Köksal.

Historically, Soares says, research on fish has been preoccupied with the negative — how stressed they get, and how much.

In a study published earlier this month in Proceedings of the Royal Society B , Soares and her team took a different approach that

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