Who decided the much repeated “fact” that Goldfish only have a three second memory? I’d like to see some actual evidence if it’s really supposed to be the case.
8 days ago I bought some comets. They’re cute little guys, and are the first goldfish I’ve had in about 18 years. They recognize me. When ever it’s nearing feeding time, they all gather near the top in one corner of the tank whenever I walk by. At first I thought that they were just doing it when a person walked by (equating large body=food) but my brother helped me test it last night by going into the room first and walking by. They totally ignored him. As soon as I walked in the all gathered in the corner again. If they only had a three second memory, they shouldn’t know to expect anything different from me than him food-wise, should they?
I won’t get into the specific issue of how they differentiate between you and somebody else, but there is one issue to conisder. “Conditioning” is different from “memory.” That’s why brainwashing works. If you condition someone or something to do something, especially if you condition by reward (such as feeding), they will do it even long after they have forgotten why.
A “memory” test would involve something like telling someone something like “I have a silver car,” engaging in unrelated dialogue for 5 minutes, then asking them “What color car do I have?”
I have no idea how you would test a fish’s memory.
Well, hey, I think that’s a good question. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer. A Google search for variations on “fish goldfish intelligence test” etc. doesn’t turn up anything useful. I don’t even see the factoid itself posted anywhere.
There’s a ton of stuff out there on animal intelligence, though.
I would suppose that somebody somewhere once tried to run goldfish through mazes, like rats, and came up with the “very short memory” factoid.
You have to define what you mean by intelligence, too. Is it “problem solving ability”? Or just “memory”?
Everyone has heard this, but nobody seems to be able to provide a cite for it. I suspect this is on par with the “common knowledge” that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.
Actually, I believe it is a rationalization along the lines of, “Sure, that goldfish is happy in that tiny goldfish bowl. Goldfish don’t remember anything long enough for it to notice how cramped it is in there.”
I think conditioning does require long term memory. The Pavlov dog had to have a memory of prior bell = food incidents to develop a conditioned response to the bell. Likewise, a goldfish would need to have some way of recalling what happened yesterday to ever figure out that the arrival of a particular mammal = food. If every feeding time was like it was happening for the first time, how could any learned response ever happen?
I think this is a factoid about on a par with statements I’ve heard about rabbit’s memories. I’ve heard it claimed that when they run into a hole to escape a predator, they come out when they forget what they ran in there for. If they remembered all the escaping they do, they’d become hopelessly paranoid. I don’t buy that one without some more evidence either.
Here’s a probably flawed suggestion for an experiment off the top of my head:
Arrange to introduce something into the tank that the goldfish will be interested in. When they start swimming towards it, slam a wall down in front of them. See how long you can leave the wall in place and have the goldfish still swim towards where the stimulus was when you lift the wall. Of course, this may be assuming more reasoning ability than a goldfish has, too.
I suspect you COULD determine that every feeding was a new experience - does the fish behave like it’s going to be fed in response to a possible learned stimulus before you dump the fish food in? I suspect the answer may be “no”.
If you Pavlovian conditioned a goldfish, how would you tell it was salivating anyway?
I apologize to elfkin477 who started this thread with an anecdote about how he HAD apparently conditioned his goldfish. Whatever a goldfish’s memory, my own seems to be about 3 seconds.
A goldfishes memory quite definately lasts longer than three seconds. I’ve raised all kinds of fish for years and study them profesionally today. One simple (although cruel, sorry) experiment I did as a kid was to drop a goldfish into a tank that had 4 small pirahnas in it - I did mention I was just a kid, right? The goldfish didn’t realize it was in danger until it had a few fins ripped off; it learned within a couple minutes to stay away from the predators. The next day he was still alive… and returned to where he came from. Had his memory been deleted every 3 seconds, he would have been completely eaten as he’d forget to run and hide when the pirahnas swam up to him. It wasn’t pure instinct since he didn’t realize that those particular (smaller) fish were dangerous until after they started eating him alive.
On another line, I was instructed in school that if a predatory fish fails to catch his prey within the first chomp or two (and provided the prey has ample swimming space to evade the predator), the predator almost never catches that individual 'cause the prey has learned - and remembered - how and when to get away from that particular threat.
Try catching a quick fish with a dipnet, releasing it, then catching it again… much more difficult. Would be easier if they forgot the experience a few seconds later.
I don’t know who if anyone has actually conducted such experiments, but they sound difficult to back up.
