Emotions and consciousness in the pond

Researchers [...] observed an increase in body temperature of between two and four degrees in zebrafish, when these are subjected to stressful situations. Until now emotional fever had been observed in mammals, birds and certain reptiles, but never in fish.
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Behaviorism and epiphenomenalism once dominated science's approach to consciousness, views which dismissed experience itself as having significance or a causal role in explanation. But even to this day it can be a bit unclear as to whether what they mean by "consciousness" is just the outer and inner anatomical appearances of an organism's body which can be categorized as awareness in the old school (body behavior, electrical / thermal measurements, mapping of functional structure, brain scans, etc as detected by and in relation to observing outsiders / apparatus). Or their version of "consciousness" does include / refer to focus on any stressful sensations the fish is feeling (i.e., such actually exhibited to it that way as opposed to just remaining hidden or opaque chemical-based activity).

The mechanistic side to stress would have its consequences over time upon the fish's body regardless of whether it was also realized as experience. But minus the manifestation of emotionally uncomfortable sensations, the fish would seem clueless as to its body suffering or why it might be deteriorating or reacting such and such way to the effects. [Imperfect analogy: A primitive human would not know the medical causes of its abdominal pain and fever (appendicitis), but it would at least directly know something was seriously wrong via those sensations being introspectively present to it, as opposed to being like a wooden Pinocchio which merely inferred that eventually from seeing its body not outwardly behaving as it normally did when healthy.]
 
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