Abstract
The development of perception augmentation technology provides great opportunities to cross species’ boundaries and create intimacy. Technologies such as virtual reality (VR) are proving to be powerful tools for expanding human capabilities and perception. However, challenges and potentiality still remain when applying these technologies to other social animals. Therefore, we designed four experiments to simulate different levels of VR augmentation, different in perception, interaction and immersion, to investigate the effects of such visual stimuli on Goldfish’s social and individual behaviours. Results have shown that the change in the level of VR augmentation had a significant effect on both the social and individual behaviours of the subject fish. With visual perception alone, fish can still distinguish the different levels of VR augmentation, and react to them to different extents, rather than simply ignore the conspecifics with less realism. These findings mean Goldfish are able to conceive and utilize VR technology and have the potential to eventually be a part of the cross-species Metaverse.