Learned behaviour

[Animal-Chin]

Ya I think the fish in our tanks totally learn from each other. I have a big squarespot anthias that did not recognize pellets as food for the longest time but would watch the other fish eat them. Now he gobbles them up. His instincts didn't tell him to do this, the other fish did.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Learning from other fish in the tank is how I was able to teach my wild seahorses back in the "old days" before captive breds were common to eat frozen mysis. I always kept at least one wild seahorse who already knew how to eat frozen and he/she would teach the newcomers.

[rsisvixen]

It does point to an inherent intelligence that they can learn. I know studies have been done with octopi, where one is trained to navigate a maze to get food, and then another is allowed to watch and will then get the maze right the first time its placed inside.