Culum Brown is a professor at Macquarie University where he is a behavioral ecologist studying fish behavior and cognition. He is a long time proponent of fish intelligence and welfare, arguing for interventions to improve the lives of fish. Culum has over 150 research publications and is in the top 2.5% of Research Gate.

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Video episode: https://youtu.be/LN6cgNu9QAM

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
2:10 Better understanding fish
4:44 Fish learning and memory
11:20 Social learning and culture
20:56 Cross species relationships: offering backrubs
27:59 Fish participate in predator evaluation together
32:57 Knowing their place in the hierarchy
37:18 Cooperating across species to hunt
41:58 Fish accumulate cultural knowledge across generations
43:46 Machiavellian intelligence in fish
46:12 What brain size means
49:04 Tool use and house building
58:14 Intelligence in parrots
59:28 Breadth of fish sensing
1:03:44 Pain in fish and other animals
1:14:24 The experience of farmed, wild-caught, lab grown, and pet fish
1:27:58 How fish are caught and killed
1:34:19 What do we do given all this suffering?
1:37:58 Policy solutions for fish welfare
1:42:43 Can we abolish the biological roots of suffering?
1:49:19 Why did land animals become generally intelligent instead of sea creatures?
1:52:49 Final thoughts from Culum
1:54:18 Where to find and follow Culum

Culum Brown on Fish Intelligence, Sentience, Ecology, and Suffering