Discussions

“Don’t worry, they won’t remember a thing,” used to be the common rebutal to people asking if it were cruel to put a goldfish in a small bowl. Earlier amazing facts pointed out that goldfish had a memory span of a mere 3 seconds. This would mean that the small fish would continually be amazed living in his glass home, because it would not even remember that it had been there for the past 1 year. But can this be true? Do they really have a memory of 3 seconds?

Scientists led by Dr. Phil Gee at the Plymouth University’s Institute of Marine Studies in England have disproved the “3 second memory fact” by training a goldfish to push a lever to get its food, and have even managed to get the goldfish to do it at the same hour every day. These results are quite amazing because it seems to implicate that fish might be more sentient than previously thought. Another experiment by Jonathan Lovell of the same university was so able to train a fish to respond to a specific sound and when released to the open sea, would return upon hearing the same sound.

Further evidence was provided by Culum Brown at the University of Edinburgh. He placed some rainbow fish in a tank and would repeatedly sweep a net (with a hole in the centre) back and forth until the fish learned to escape through the center hole. New fish were then introduced, and he found that the older fish could ‘remember’ how to escape the net even up to 11 months after the learning experience. Considering that the rainbow fish only lived as long as 3 years, this was interesting and in humman terms would show a memory of up to 25 years.

Other theories supporting goldfish memory include “associative learning” and “social learning”. Associative learning is shown when a goldfish approaches the surface of the water everytime your hand approaches their tank. They have associated your feeding hand with food. Social learning is found in schools of fish where they all learn how to escape threats by watching one another.

Even an Australian schoolboy was able to disprove the fact. Perhaps we should accept that goldfish have memories, does this mean that goldfish are sentient as well?