I’m sure you all have heard about fish and their three-second memories. Turns out that is actually a myth! I have a Beta fish in my dorm room and every day I pick up his food bag and once he sees it, he automatically rushes to the top of his tank. That led me to think, “I thought fish had an extremely short memory? How does he know that I am going to feed him?” I figured that all fish were like Dory from the movie, Finding Dory. I wanted to investigate this so called “fact” about fish.
I came across an extremely interesting study made by college students in Israel. They said that every day at feeding time they would blast a particular sound underwater in a speaker every time they put food in the water. After constant training, they would put the speaker in without the food and the fish would still swim to the location because they knew it was time to eat. The most interesting part is that they released the fish into a small section of seawater to fend for themselves. Five months later, they put the speaker under the water, played the sound, and the fish automatically went to the top of the water waiting for the food…
A man named Culum Brown created his own study involving fish and their memory to get out of a net. He would catch them in a huge net and had a hole for an escape route. Within five trials of his experiment the fish finally learned how to get out of it. He used the net a year later to catch the fish, and without a doubt the fish swam to the hole and instantly got out.
So the typical stories you hear about fish having three-second memories, do you still believe it? I personally don’t believe it is possible for a living thing to have a memory that short, but who knows! My fish is pretty smart if you ask me, but maybe I am the dumb one falling for this idea!
This was a very interesting topic you brought up! I too have wondered the same thing about memory span relating to fish. This compelled me to ask myself “Are there any certain types of fish who have the best long term memory?” I researched this and found out that yes- certain breeds of fish acquire more memory span than others. The Australian freshwater rainbow fish was recorded to have memorised escape holes about 11 months apart from each other -despite not having seen the apparatus in the meantime. Click here to read the full article about goldfishes memories and the Australian freshwater rainbow fish.
I always believe the myth of fish having three second memory spans until my family got a goldfish that has been in the family for about five years. It always knows when we’re about to feed it because it sees us pick up the fish food and recognizes what it is. I always found that contradictory to the myth of fish having short memory spans. This article I found says that people made this myth up to justify the fact that we make our fish live in such boring little bowls. It also explains an experiment where fish were trained to get food when pressing a lever but it would only work for one hour a day. The fish eventually learned what hour it would work and perfected it. The article even suggests that fish could even have memories lasting for several months. Here’s the link to the article: http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/706/forgetful_fish.html