How paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis, L.) explores a chessboard.

We investigated the exploratory movements of Anabantid fishes in a chessboard-like aquarium (divided into 25 communicating compartments) as a new environment. The analysis was based on the observation of the route of two inbred strains of paradise fish (Macropodus opercularis; Teleostei, Anabantoidae). We recorded their movement within the blocks until 100 steps, and compared the obtained process with hypothetical random walks.