Evaluation of a behavioural response of Mediterranean coastal fishes to novel recreational feeding situation

Fish may learn to associate food with human presence through recreational hand-feeding, a popular tourist activity. The conditional learning—e.g. when an organism learns by continuous exposure to one stimulus—of different coastal fish species exposed to novel feeding situations was evaluated. The latencies of learning response to the initiation of supplementary feeding were rapid and species-specific. However differences in the learning response between different fishes decreased over time, demonstrating that associating with others might incur costs especially for small-sized species, likely due to increased competition for food. Nevertheless some other fish species did not acquire any specific human oriented behavior, being naturally timid or avoiding humans.