Dr Culum Brown of Macquarie University, Australia, has been doing some research on fish, and concludes that they are intelligent, live in social communities (etc) and generally display ‘behavioural and cognitive sophistication’. Dr Brown’s research would seem to have consisted of reading the 2nd Century AD essayist Plutarch.

In a treatise on the cleverness of animals, Plutarch stages a debate between the pro-animal and pro-fish lobby.