anybait.com/2017/01/13/the-battle-for-the-glowing-bait/) ~~~ jason_slack Thank you. This is a really useful perspective. I really wish people would leave their bias's at home when they discuss such things. This stuff, while it's super interesting to me, isn't actually that useful to me on the fishing front. A friend had a good idea when he said if you can't be an expert on what's really happening in these systems, then simply say what you know. ------ mcguire It might be nice if a few folks who aren't "in the loop" stopped acting like they know anything about it. The "you could win a Nobel Prize" is a bit over the top. ~~~ jandrese Maybe we should be more humble when we're wrong. ~~~ mcguire " _Maybe you should think a little less of yourself and a little more of us._ _—Tycho Brahe, to Johannes Kepler_ " _To be sure, we may yet be surprised. There are so many things about the moon that we haven 't yet figured out. (...)_ " Also, there are lots of people who have done Nobel Prize-quality research on fish attractors and fish movement. Here's a quote from someone who I _think_ I've heard good things about: "...in many species the male's olfactory organ and the female's sense of smell have become specialized in non-mating functions. However, they can both be stimulated by the same or similar substances." [1] There are lots of people making great progress in the field. Some of them aren't so well known or heard of, though, because they aren't always writing a popular article or doing popular talks. [1] [http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Population-Structure- Fishli...](http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Population-Structure-Fisheries- Animal/dp/0521318302) ------ bluedevil2k I understand that the writer is attempting to explain things in simple terms, but the writer has no clue what's going on. They just spewed more bullshit. The "science" of fish seems to be based on the fact that we don't really understand what they do at a fundamental level. Here's a list of articles on fish behavior in the last few years: [http://neurosciencenews.com/fish-fish-behavior- cognition](http://neurosciencenews.com/fish-fish-behavior-cognition) ~~~ mcguire " _The "science" of fish seems to be based on the fact that we don 't really understand what they do at a fundamental level._" Do you feel the same way about humans? _He then proceeds to confuse several different senses of "sense": visual perception, sound waves, electroreception, chemical (smell and taste), and touch._ He doesn't do much better with the _sense_ of the article itself. ~~~ bluedevil2k Yes. I feel the same way about humans too. The fish "smell" and "taste" is actually electroreception, and he gets that right. He then goes on to claim that "smell" is the sense of smell, when in fact smell is a subset of electroreception, as anyone who has trained dogs knows. He then gets it correct again when talking about sound waves. The information comes from electroreception and not air molecules. The author (at least in my eyes) appears to be quite a fundamentalist when it comes to facts. ~~~ mcguire I don't think his errors are important. What I find interesting is the confusion between what you would expect to find and what you actually do find. " _They found that the fish could follow a zigzag path, tracing figure-8's around corners, following the wall from one side to another, even when the wall was only two inches tall, no thicker than a book. But if there were a three-inch wide hole in the wall, the fish could find it. “The fish can navigate around the smallest of obstacles,” he said._ " How about the little guys? They are smaller than book size; you can't really get away from them. And they don't have any vision or smell or whatever else. " _He then proceeds to confuse several different senses of "sense": visual perception, sound waves, electroreception, chemical (smell and taste), and touch._" So, that's a problem, is it? The author didn't read the original paper, he just read something in a popular magazine about the research. " _He then gets it correct again when talking about sound waves._ " But not quite. If you want to detect sound, your noise needs to be greater than the ambient noise. ------ kken > The key is that their electroreceptors sense the Earth’s electromagnetic > fields, which they use to generate a map of the nearby environment. > Scientists say this is how they avoid obstacles and find their way back home The whole article suffers from the assumption that electromagnetic fields are the only information an animal can get from their surroundings. That is not true, as all information is translated into electric pulses by the receptors. The most advanced animals are the dolphins, who have a sense of echolocation capable of detecting obstacles down to 1-2mm. Of course, an animal without sense of sight has no way of knowing what it looks like, so it needs some other way of finding out what an object is. That’s why dolphins have a strong smell sense (olfaction). ------ mistercow The science is much more interesting than the science writer's understanding of the science. There's this big difference between "we don't know how the electroreceptors work" and "electroreception doesn't play a significant role in the animal's sensory information chain", and he misses it entirely. It might not be the "central dogma" of biology that sensory organs provide their only source of input. But in the real world, it is a _good_ assumption, and ignoring it is basically negligent. ------ thebooktocome What about all the fish that don't behave like this? ~~~ zimpenfish Well, he didn't say "this is the most common behaviour" did he? ~~~ thebooktocome Fair enough. ------ dismal2 This can be simplified to an electron microscope, but only if you are a scientist. ~~~ JoeAltmaier This is _not_ true. A microscope is simply a way to magnify something. The electron microscope may be better, but that's a different claim, about technology. It's _completely different_ than what's discussed here, by the author. ~~~ dismal2 You seem confused. People know there are things that can be detected beyond the range of normal human vision, so their eyes in real life. What are they actually seeing? That's the question this article is exploring. In the end, I think what you are getting at is the fact that the author needs to back up his point more with facts and data rather than just making an assumption about how this data can be transferred. But yeah, the fish are getting electrical signals from their environment. I guess I didn't make that clear enough. ~~~ JoeAltmaier I agree with all that. But an electron microscope and the ability to see with electromagnetic radiation are completely different. One involves making things smaller (the electron microscope), the other involves getting energy out of the environment (the electroreceptive cells). The electroreceptive cells, are not really using or seeing electromagnetism. They're responding to the current in air moving by the fish. So, the question is: what's the fish 'seeing' with those receptors? Not electromagnetic waves caused by electromagnetism, but current in air, which is really just air moving. So why does this matter? Because this whole article is based on a total misunderstanding of the sciences (not the fish, not electroreception) involved. It has