# Goldfish are smart!!



## Guest

Reading up and heard about how goldfis hhave only 3-second memory spans... check this out 

http://nootropics.com/intelligence/smartfish.html

www.nootropics.com/intelligence/smartfish.html


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## Fishfirst

lol that myth is a big one. Everyone here knows fish are a lot smarter than most people give credit to


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## harif87

It was also proven by the mythbusters!


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## Guest

MYTHBUSTERS?!?!? REALLY!! Can u send me the link if ufind it


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## Mazzy

I know that just cuz a prof. says this doesn't mean it's absolutely true but my zoology prof back in college told me the same thing - 3 seconds. He said "so if a gold fish is dying, it thinks it's been dying it's whole life" which I thought was kinda sad.


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## flamingo

Fish have a certain memory that only lasts a few seconds, but generally they are smart. They aren't just a "ball of nerves" as my dad once put it...


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## Guest

harif i really need that link..so cool


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## harif87

I dont know if its online, i saw it on TV....... mythbusters junkie right here! lol


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## Sable

I love mythbusters, too.  I've never seen that one, unfortunately.


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## Fishfirst

they put goldfish through a sort of maze with food at the end... the goldfish got better at doing the maze over time.


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## PetMax

you can also train them to pull on a small piece of twine attached to a bell. Basically, teach them to ring the bell for food. Takes more than a 3second memory to do that


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## harif87

Personally i think its impossible for any animal to have a 3 second memory span. Because if it were true how would the animal remember how to hunt for food and hide from predators? Maybe one could say that those are instinctive but the fish would without question forget the face of his predators.

The whole 3 second memory thing is all because people under estimate the qualities of fish, especially goldfish. I bet the theory of the 3 second memory came right after the idea that goldfish can live in a bowl all their lives happily...


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## Guest

yeah soo true..too bad about the mythbusters thing...I really wanted to watch it...


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## Mazzy

can't you just look it up? the mythbusters thing I mean??
hang on.. I'll do a search right now...
OK I found this:

http://ask.yahoo.com/20051129.html
The MythBusters TV show taught some goldfish to swim through a maze, noting that their time got better on each successive run. And an interesting response to the AnswerBag Forum describes goldfish memory as "selective" -- they have a general idea of what happened on a previous occasion, they're just not sure what. We empathize. 

And on the mythbusters website it shows that the episode whas #11 season one but does not give a video clip.

And lastly, here is a recap from another website...

http://kwc.org/blog/archives/2004/2...ng_ships_goldfish_1812_overture_trombone.html

Three-Second Goldfish Memory
This myth states that goldfish only have three seconds of memory, so you shouldn't feel bad when you stick them in a small fish bowl -- by the time they make it around the bowl, it's all new to them.

This silly myth was mainly an opportunity to show off the fact that Jamie really knows aquarium fish (apparently he trained a goldfish to ring a bell). They set up the mythbusting as a competition between Adam and Jamie to see who could train their fish to swim through a maze (four dividers in an aquarium with a hole in each) the quickest.

Jamie busted out bright colored rings, which he used to condition the fish to associate with food. Adam busied himself with trying to prevent the fish from dying. When it came to competition time, Jamie's fish zoomed from one side of the tank to the other. Adam's aimlessly wandered back and forth and never made it more than halfway across the course. 

K, that's it. There's definitely more if you choose to look through the endless search results but this is what I found just typing in "mythbusters goldfish memory"


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## mayastarocker

people always think that animals are stupid, mainly goldfish. I think all animals are smart. I think that is how they get their personalities. My two goldfish that I used to have had quite the characters.


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## Mazzy

As a professional animal caregiver, I can tell you that the way we judge "smarts" in animals is by their ability to problem solve among other things. I guess you could argue that, as humans, we simply don't apply the correct tests to each individual animal because of our own lack of understanding. But I can also tell you that these catagories of "smartness" are generalities based on overall performance i.e. some people talk about how "smart" their dog may be but overall, dogs are considered pretty dumb animals (in relation to all other animals) so even though there is obviously several cases where a dog would do something that would be considered very smart (for a dog), OVERALL the dog is still classified as a low intellegence animal. 
So, your particular goldfish may be very smart for a goldfish but of all the goldfish/carp in all the world, they don't fair well on the "smartmeter" for problem solving and learning ability. 
All you have to do is look at humans really  We've got our Einsteins but we certainly have a lot of not-so-Einstein like people too. (The difference is, even those people who weren't blessed with a 126 IQ can STILL problem solve and have the ability to learn different tasks).
So anyway, that's the shpew on animal intellegence


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## Betta splendens

Really? How, tell me how can one train his goldie to ring a bell??? 

And yes animals are certainly smarter than that, but some don't have the best memory, and so pure instinct would tell them to avoid predators and find food and all that. 

I wonder where goldfish come in on the smartest animals list, the first three being humans, dolphins, and dogs. And on the second half of what Mazzy said, animals may generally look the same as eachother, but their mental capacity is surely as diverse as in human's.

What is that type of goldfish in the pic on the links?


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## Mazzy

betta splendens, I believe the top three on "smartness" are humans, chimps & bonobos, and gorillas. The apes (all of US) have that market cornered. Dogs are actually pretty low on that list. Dont' get me wrong, I love my dog, but that doesn't mean I am gonna lie to myself about her intellegence in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom - dogs... not so smart.


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## Lydia

For a while now I've been wanting to try an experiment. It wouldn't involve goldfish, but the fish in my community tank. There is a baby grand piano right next to the tank, and I have been wondering if my fish (which are trained to expect food right after I turn the tank light on) could be trained to expect food after I play the piano. They would have to distinguish between me and the other people that play the piano sometimes. That's not the only thing I've been considering trying, because I think fish are smart enough to figure that one out. I've been wondering if they could be trained to respond to a certain song. What do y'all think? Does that just sound like a crazy experiment or is it worth trying?


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## Mazzy

I don't thnk it'd be hard to train your fish to feel a specific vibration via sound and expect food. However, that would not indicate intellegence. I think that is the common misconception causing people to think dogs are smart too. Training something to respond in a specific way to a specific command, in this case, sound=food, does not indicate intellegence in the way I beleive we are speaking of here. It does show some ability to learn BUT not in the way we would consider it to be true learning i.e. problem solving. The goldfish wants food and so would figure out that this is the sign for food when they feel the vibration of the piano. 
It would indicate deductive reasoning which is an indication of intellegence but definitely not high intellegence. I mean, even fish have to have enough "intellegence" to eat. That is simple survival skills, not what we consider real intellegence.


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## fatmanonthinice

I love mythbusters ^.^ ....and yeah..it's been proven wrong many times now...when when you think about it..the longer you have a goldfish..it will learn who feeds them...or that a human means food..so after having a pet goldfish...it'll learn that when a human comes...food comes also..so they swim to the top looking for food...


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## stargate_geek

The mythbuster's are awesome

http://www.fish-school.com/

That site is really cool


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## girth vader

another myth busters junkie here too!  

What ppl forget is that all living things are influenced by a circadium rhythm. this is a cycle that helps us function and form a schedule using light. We know we are tired because our body judges the amount of light and adjusts accordingly. That is why you get jet lagged. Messes up your circadium rhythm, which in turn makes you feel extra tired untill your body adjusts to the new light exposure. However you can help hassen this time by eating. Lets say you are going to England which has a 5 hr time difference, if you started to eat using England time a few days before you travel, your jetlag will not be as heavily noticed. We can sligtly alter out C rythym using food as well. So getting back to the fish, they will certainly use this to establish a feeding time. Plants, animals, basically everything that lives uses this, I don't know why ppl think fish would be any different. We aquarists have known this for some time, but it's nice to see others discovering that fish aren't dumb as well. Another reason why it is very important to keep lights on a timer, so the fish can maintain their rhythm, which lowers stress in plants and fish the same  sorry for the long post, I just find this topic fascinating


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## darkfalz

You don't really want to see that episode of Mythbusters, Adam's fish didn't do very well - but at least the pet store owner was sort of responsible, gave them 40 gallon tanks and seachem prime hehe. Wonder what happened to Jamie's after the show...


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## Clerk

We also didn't really want to see old threads dragged to the top of the forum.


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