The commonly held belief that goldfish have short memories has been debunked by 15 year old Rory Stokes, a student at the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide.
"We are told that a goldfish has a memory span of less than three seconds... I wanted to challenge this theory as I believe it is a myth intended to make us feel less guilty about keeping fish in small tanks." Rory said.
His experiments involved placing a beacon in the fish tank at feeding time each day and measuring the time it took for fish to swim and obtain their food reward. The time taken reduced dramatically over a 3 week period, from a minute to a few seconds at which point Rory removed the beacon from the feeding process.
Six days later, he once again placed the beacon in the water and despite not seeing it for almost a week, the fish swam to the beacon in 4.4 seconds, showing they had remembered the association between food and the beacon for at least six days.
"My results strongly showed that goldfish can retain knowledge for at least six days," Rory said.
http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/02/18/SA_schoolboy_explodes_fishmemory_myth to news article
(This is a legitimate question. I'm not trying to be a smart ass or anything.)
I have never met anyone who actually believed that myth anyway...
Alas...
yeah, you're right it's classical conditioning, not unlike Pavlov's experiments with dogs. Pavlov would ring a bell at feeding time, and eventually the dogs would begin to salivate when the bell rang, expecting food.
it's still about memory though, as they remember to make the association.
neat.
It is a classic example of Pavlovian conditioning and there is some level of memory association at work.
Also, I remember the mythbusters episode was inconclusive: Jamie's fish appeared to adapt to the maze while Adam's fish were eating their own poo! ;)
"but for kids at that age, it’s a clever experiment that teaches them quite a bit on numerous levels."
Kid's that age??? The kid is 15, not 5. When I was 15 I designed and built my own working Gas Chromatograph (with both a FID and TCD), not train fish to swim to food.
Sucks that public education in Australia is no better then it is here in the States.
my goldfish commonly eat their own feces, and sometimes they don't spit it out. don't know if that's a measure of intelligence, but it sure is gross.
Besides, the article seems to be a rip off of Mythbusters quotes. The goldfish memory episode quoted "debunked" about five times, and stated "the theory of keeping fish in small tanks" right from the show.
If someone did a better and more concise experiment years before you did, there's no need to do a smaller test and tell the whole world.
// i think i confuse reality and fantasy sometimes :-/
You are not only an absolute nerd, you are an arrogant prick as well. Must've been a really lonely teenager.
I've had kids of that age do all sorts of experiments which have been repeated a number of times before. So the 15 year old isn't breaking new ground. They obviously had an assignment, chose something that interested them, replicated it...and some desperate journalist thinks to sensationalise it. Kid's probably like a deer in headlights with the fame of it, but hardly entered it thinking he was Einstein.
If anything, I think it deserves praise for Australia's education system, while a wake-up call for science journalism.
Athon
Classical conditioning comes into play if, for instance, a fish involuntarily sticks out its tongue whenever it catches sight of a shrimp. If you repeatedly place the beacon in the water right before giving the fish a shrimp, the fish will habitually stick out its tongue in response to the beacon, even if you don't feed it afterwards.
People that stick them in stagnant bowls are cruelly killing goldfish slowly - no to mention those stuck in ipods!!
i don't know how many people ive met who wonder why their fish die in one week (space, uncycled tank, waste materials, untreated water, etc.)
yes, i love fish!
As for the experiment, yes the Mythbusters have been there and done that. However, I will still be passing this link on to someone I know, who has been using the "three-second memory" myth as an excuse for keeping four good-sized goldfish in a ten-gallon tank and three others in a bowl. He actually said that goldfish are too stupid to feel pain, and even if they did, they wouldn't remember! And he wonders why they're now dying one by one...