Every once in a while a story comes along that makes you take a second look. This is one of them. Rory Stokes, a 15-year-old schoolboy of the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide has disproven a commonly held belief that the memory span of a goldfish is only three seconds. He did so out of a desire to prove to people that keeping fish in tiny tanks is cruel.
According to Rory:
We are told that a goldfish has a memory span of less than three seconds and that no matter how small its tank is, it will always discover new places and objects. 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.
Over a three week period, Rory trained his goldfish to swim to a beacon in order to obtain food. Over the three week period, the time taken by the fish to reach the beacon reduced from over a minute to less than five seconds.
Cool, so you can train fish, how does Rory go about proving that the fish have longer memory spans?
This is where the experiment gets interesting. After the three week training period, Rory removed the beacon for six days. After six days, the beacon was replaced in the water and the fish reached it in a total of 4.4 seconds. “My results strongly showed that goldfish can retain knowledge for at least six days. They can retain that knowledge indefinitely if they use it regularly,” said Rory.
Source: The Age
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Tags: pet, Science
31 responses
Feb 19, 2008 at 9:20 pm
that is great! It also makes me feel a little disappointed in myself
Feb 19, 2008 at 10:49 pm
you have never saw mithbusters dont you…
Feb 19, 2008 at 11:00 pm
yeah mythbusters did this myth a while back, it first appeared in 2004
A goldfish”s memory lasts only three seconds.
busted
Jamie trained his goldfish to recognize color patterns and complete an obstacle course under water. They remembered what Jamie had taught them over a month later and easily completed the same course without Jamie”s prompting.
Feb 19, 2008 at 11:15 pm
You have never learn grammer do you…
Feb 19, 2008 at 11:47 pm
That was more impressive than the Mythbusters episode regarding the memory of a goldfish.
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:04 am
Sometimes doing it yourself trumps watching it on TV.
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:18 am
u never learned spelling though did u toby?
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:37 am
maybe australia doesnt get mythbusters?
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:46 am
Apparently, neither did “u”.
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:56 am
This is procedural memory, which is different than declarative memory. Procedural memory is the memory you have when you know how to do stuff, like type or put on contacts, its not something people or fish for that matter actively think about. The memory people are conscious of is declarative or episodic memory, where they remember facts or events in there life.
I doubt fish have declarative memory because they can’t answer questions, but i think the three seconds refer to the episodic memory, which is what they actually remember about their lives. This you can’t devise an experiment to check. The experiment described actually tests the fish working memory, which, though might be quite impressive has nothing to do with the subjective experience fish have of their tanks. Still, impressive work for a fifteen year old.
Feb 20, 2008 at 1:51 am
I think I’m gonna stop watching Mythbusters, because watching it seems to turn you into a douche bag.
Feb 20, 2008 at 3:00 am
They’re FISH. I think they’d take being in that tank over being on my plate any day of the week.
Feb 20, 2008 at 7:34 am
Fantastic~ Thank you Mr. Stokes for enlightening my shallow perceptions of caging animals… in any form.
Check out “Earthlings” on youtube for free and know where your meat is coming from. Narrated by Jaoquin Phoenix and music my Moby~
“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, would we still consume our dinner?”
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:20 pm
well.. golden fish… which is in fact orange… first thought…
my second thought is… can anyone explain why they never hit the glass too hard trying to swim just a little bit more ahead? do golden fish know they’re in a glass tank? because… they change tanks from the stores to our homes.. sometimes in plastic bags.. just like “bubble-boy” :-S well… i have one fact that seems to prove they are 3-second-dumbs …. you just have to keep feeding them non-stop… and you’ll see the result! hahaha.. they forget they already ate and eat some more… count how much time the fish remains within bites.. maybe you get to some great conclusion!
clap clap clap for Mr. Rory Stokes, a 15-year-old schoolboy … impressive experiment.. or not….
Feb 20, 2008 at 12:35 pm
“This is procedural memory, which is different than declarative memory. Procedural memory is the memory you have when you know how to do stuff, like type or put on contacts, its not something people or fish for that matter actively think about. The memory people are conscious of is declarative or episodic memory, where they remember facts or events in there life.
I doubt fish have declarative memory because they can”t answer questions, but i think the three seconds refer to the episodic memory, which is what they actually remember about their lives. This you can”t devise an experiment to check. The experiment described actually tests the fish working memory, which, though might be quite impressive has nothing to do with the subjective experience fish have of their tanks.”
Exactly what I was thinking. Long term and short term memory work independently from each other. For instance, just because a person can remember how to ride a bicycle doesn’t mean they can remember what they ate last night.
An example of this separation becomes distinct as we monitor elderly people. As humans grow older, they tend to be able to remember, in gruesome details, events which occurred decades ago; however, it is far more difficult for them to remember more recent things, such as when they last had medicine/ leave some keys etc.
Also, I dispute the fact that this kid is a “brainiac”. This experiment is something which I have done many times before, without reaching a conclusion about fish memory simply because of what I have established above. I don’t see my name being publicized as some fish experimenting “genius”…
Feb 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm
The only thing preventing me from eating goldfish is that they are too small to be worth it. If they have anything worth remembering it’s that.
Feb 20, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Well, if they did it on myth busters, case closed right? I want my kid to do little experiments like this with or without mythbusters. I like that show, but I love it when my kid takes some initiative discovers something for herself. Its a rare thing, so good for him.
Feb 21, 2008 at 2:58 am
This is not a news story. Mythbusters did this ages ago - yes we do get it here in Aus. Obviously whoever thought this was a news story hasn’t seen it. Rory has probably seen it also.
Feb 21, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Didn’t Mythbusters do this years ago?
Feb 22, 2008 at 9:40 pm
“I think the three seconds refer to the episodic memory”
If there is not experiment to test this, there is no way to know this in the first place. Thereofre, then chances of this being true are slim, as it would just be a random guess.
The kid says “They can retain that knowledge indefinitely if they use it regularly”
Can he back this assertion up?
And why is it cruel to captivate an animal with memory. I doubt it has ever complained about it.
Feb 25, 2008 at 7:01 am
There never was a myth that a goldfish’s memory was just 3 seconds. 30 seconds, perhaps, but definitely not 3. And, as others have said, whatever the value this was an urban myth and has been debunked dozens of times elsewhere. It was just a PR puff piece.
db
Feb 27, 2008 at 6:07 pm
May I humbly suggest a new headline:
“15 year old boy follows scientific method and learns something all on his own.”
Catch up with this shocking story of self-discovery by staring mute at your TV screen whilst sitting on the couch, shoveling your dinner into your mouth. Join with us as we ostracise him by calling him names like “Brainiac” and compare his work to something we once saw on the TV several years ago.
You too can feel superior to the-boy-who-wanted-to-learn by inventing some theory to explain why his conclusions are wrong, even in the face of experimental evidence, and further stating that it is impossible to test your theory because you can’t talk to Goldfish.
Don’t worry about trying to learn for yourself. Everything you will ever need to know can be looked up on the internet.
Feb 28, 2008 at 3:52 am
Hmmmm. That’s a rather fascetious response don’t you think?
Yes, on the surface this looks like a story about youthful scientific discovery, wonderful indeed. Everyone should get out there and learn things for themselves as best they can.
But, then do we really need some institution hoping to gain media exposure for itself to hype every one of those discoveries as if they were somehow new cutting edge science? I don’t think so. The vast majority of news stories of this sort, start life as a press release created with the sole aim of gaining publicity for the organization that posts it. They’re not genuine human-interest stories that some lowly hack has plucked from the ether.
Sorry if that seems cynical, it’s just the way of the world.
db
Mar 13, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Thanks conrath and Jason. I’m glad you made this point with greater psychological/neuroscientific sophistication than I currently possess. I did grasp that there was something amiss–since it seems obvious that there’s a difference between automatized behavior and conscious recall of data.
I suspect that it’s exactly this type of equivocation of declarative and episodic memory (or automatized behavior and conscious recall) that this kid and others rely upon in order to blur the line between human and animal cognition–and then come to conclusions like “it’s cruel to keep fish in tiny tanks”.
On a side note–even if it were true that fish had all sorts of amazing memory abilities, it wouldn’t make a lick of difference with respect to the crucial distinction between Man and other animals: the rational (conceptual) faculty. (Of course, that’s a much more involved topic.)
Mar 15, 2008 at 11:55 pm
And David, don’t you think your response is a bit egotistic? Just because you’ve never heard of the myth, doesn’t mean it’s not out there.
Mar 19, 2008 at 7:54 pm
My wife’s angel fish knows how to look sad and hungry at the corner of the tank by door. If you walk by and glance over it will be staring at you until you pop a little shrimp pellet in. After that one pellet it just swims away happy as can be. Then the rest of her fish notice the movement and pool near the top waiting for their flakes.
Eumaledictio | Amazing Useless “Facts” (and the actual facts)
Mar 20, 2008 at 4:41 pm
[...] goldfish can remember an event for about 3 months. See multiple studies on this for more info. It is pretty [...]
Mar 22, 2008 at 9:43 am
Peter, just because an animal cant complain doesn’t mean you can be cruel to it…If you haven’t noticed goldfish cant actually talk.
Apr 29, 2008 at 7:46 pm
teaching an animal (any animal, including a human) to behave in a certain way in order to receive a reward (or, less effectively, avoid a punishment) is called conditioning…. and it is not the same as memory. Saying that a fish “remembers” to swim to a beacon for food is therefore inaccurate. Zeh probably had it closer when he said that a fish will eat itself to death because it doesn’t remember that it has just eaten
May 10, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I’d say this is a myth unless someone can tell me what experiment was done that proved a goldfish CAN remember something for 2 seconds?
Aug 11, 2008 at 7:33 am
OK, firstly I am actually the Rory Stokes from the story.
Yes, it is no big newsflash, it just sounds good in the newspapers. It has been proven before, I was more aiming to find it out for myself and in the process help dispel the myth. I find it amazing that people can still beleive it, and yet I still meet people who do.
However, my experiment did get some results that none of the media picked up on. Firstly, the fish remembered fine after 6 days, then 6 weeks, and even after 6 months they still came to the beacon. I was beggining to suspect that they were just curious, but just the other day (12 months after the experiment) they completely ignored it when I put it in.
Also, for a few days I used a different coloured beacon, and they were actually afraid of it, and instead of coming to the surface and waiting for food, they got as far away as they could. This suggested that they were actually percieving different colours, and specifically associating the one colour with food.
Finally: yes my experiment did not deserve anywhere near the media response it got, however my method etc were good enough to win me first place in the statewide Oliphant Science Awards experiment category, as well as into the top 14 in Australia for the BHP Billiton Science awards.
oh and one last thing, pavlov and zeh: fish won’t eat themselves to death. even if they couldn’t remember, they would be able to tell when they are full.
What you are experiencing is a new thing a few people have discovered called ‘hunger’
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