[robertprice]

This item was not in his way. He could easily have dragged it to a corner if he didn't want want to explore it. My interpretation was that it was curious about something it hadn't ever seen before.

I've been studying Amphilophine( and Flowerhorn) behavior for 15 years. I've seen orchestrated digging between a male and female Flowerhorn which obviously required some type of communication. A have one Floewrhorn who makes a clicking sound after he eats a Cichlid Stick, but is quiet whenever he eats anything else. George Barlow estimated that these cichlids have a vocabulary of about 16 noises, most of which are subsonic. Having seen this fish's predecessorhit an air stone out of the tank with the same piece of plastic, I don't believe that these acts conform to random behavior.