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Novawurmson t1_j67vfbq wrote

Reply to comment by NotBlazeron in Cat broke into Lynx's cage and now they are best buds. by V6R32

Works even better for cheetahs than humans. It's not the loneliness (they raise cheetahs in groups); it's that the cheetahs partially base their stress on the rest of their group. The golden retrievers are living the life (food, exercise, constant cheetah, dog, and human companionship) and are lower stress to begin with.

Interesting, this is also a thing in raising fish. Some skittish fish do better if there's chill, schooling fish around. If the schooling fish aren't hiding, that likely means no predators are around, so the skittish fish can relax.

Edit: As several people have pointed out, the fish are called dither fish. I haven't raised fish in a while and had forgotten the term.

Edit2: I also didn't know the piece about it reducing aggression. I didn't really raise territorial fish like cichlids, so that's cool.

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ma2412 t1_j67wqrr wrote

Hm, not so different from us then.

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asteriskysituation t1_j68b346 wrote

Aquarium hobbiests call those “dither fish” because of their behavior of “dithering” back and forth, it’s also helpful to displace aggressive fish behaviors as a kind of “distraction”

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Sunsent_Samsparilla t1_j68k3nm wrote

Makes sense. It's like a pro and a noob playing a game together. If the pro doesn't seem worried the noob wmwont be either.

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