Attitudinal differences toward wildlife have important implications for conflict management and when the species in question have strong cultural and religious associations, conflict mitigation becomes a challenging endeavor. We investigated farmers' attitudes toward two different crop-raiding macaque species, the rhesus macaque in northern India, and the bonnet macaque in southern India. Apart from regional differences in attitudes, we also assessed temporal changes in attitude toward the rhesus macaque. We carried out household surveys using a semistructured questionnaire to collect data. Our findings reveal that respondents in southern and northern India differ significantly in their views regarding species sanctity and preference for mitigation options. Although people's perceptions of the rhesus macaques had changed over time in northern India, farmers were still unwilling to cause harm to the macaques. We discuss the underlying causes of these observed differences in attitude and their impact on the management of human-macaque conflict.

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The present study explored relationships between personality traits; boldness, activity and 2 sociability, and lateralized utilization of brain hemispheres in the hatchery reared juveniles of Deccan Mahseer (Tor khudree), a game fish inhabiting the rivers of central and southern 2 India. Our results revealed a significant positive correlation between boldness and activity in 2 this species when tested in isolation. However, boldness was positively correlated with the 2 time spent near the individual conspecific but not with the individual alien invasive 2 heterospecific tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus). Although juvenile Deccan mahseer 3 exhibited significant variation in the preference towards conspecific over heterospecific, no 3 divergence in the utilization of right or left eye was seen while observing these individuals 3 suggesting the lack of lateralized utilization of the brain hemispheres. Furthermore, laterality 3 in visual preference failed to show any significant correlation with any of the personality 3 traits tested in this species. Results are discussed in the light of the existing literature on the 3 impact of life in homogenous hatchery conditions on the behaviour, personality traits and 3 cognitive abilities of fishes.

In this study we showed that a freshwater fish, the climbing perch (Anabas testudineus) is incapable of using chemical communication but employs visual cues to acquire familiarity and distinguish a familiar group of conspecifics from an unfamiliar one. Moreover, the isolation of olfactory signals from visual cues did not affect the recognition and preference for a familiar shoal in this species.