Settling in lakes Victoria and Malawi
Are the many fish we know too well as Cichlid,
Spread about the continent. So they show so free
And yet diverse and trapped in matchless id
That we are awed. Long they existed; long did
We seek to research those like Tropheus Brichardi.
Odd that they act human, though wild they may be.

Much was known of Cichlid to this day:
Scientists uncovered many tens of kinds
In Africa alone. Only now we know the way,
Not as before, to analyze such minds.
Colleges intent, on trips athwart the binds
So vast and wide: the great Atlantic, where friendly
Cousins swim, now studied ever more intently.

By and by this research seeks to venture and presume
That Cichlid species act with human traits.
Some, it seems, observe the ones who loom
Above the rest in battle. Years so prior state,
With limited technology, none the proper bait,
That fish are fish as men are men, but yet
These laws of observation now, in gills, are set.

Others have adapted, and have put to common use
The act of camouflage, but not here to protect
From enemies, or strike the creatures more obtuse.
Instead the clever males will all endeavor to perfect,
And perhaps apply the skill to stealthily reflect,
So newly, shades of female kind, to filch the food
And spoils owned among the members of the brood.

This does not, inherently, impress the learned man.
Many animals adapt to techniques such as this.
What one needs to comprehend is how this plan
Is thus enacted. Here it lies in cleverness
Of mind and sight and not inbred innateness
That for so long was suspected in a genus
Seen as minuscule as Iodotropheus.

Such a keen ability to act on observation
Calls to us to understand the Cichlid’s skill
To view a world of visual relation.
Be the deed to pilfer food, or train to kill
A foe, Cichlid very sensibly perform, and will
Use sight to move ahead. This leaves us to question, then,
How close these mermaids come to being men.