Researchers have witnessed how cleaner fish calm their subjects, often dangerous predators, by massaging them gently with their fins while they're cleaning them. A new study in the journal Behavior Ecology, however, is showing how this calming effect not only prevents the cleaner fish from becoming meals, but other prey fish in the general vicinity as well.
You want happy ending?
Redouan Bshary and his team at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland set up reefs in an aquarium with predators, prey and cleaners and other reefs with just predators and prey. The result was...
...resounding…
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