Have you ever that the average attention span of a gold fish is nine seconds, which is allegedly shorter than us humans who according to a study from Microsoft Corp. generally loses concentration after eight seconds.
Being that a goldfish attention span may very well be longer than humans, then its no shock that eventually the goldfish would start driving.
Maybe a goldfish and a human are not that different after all.
Israeli Scientists from Ben-Gurion University claim they have taught a goldfish to steer a robotic car on ground. The fish are located in a small fish tank and their movements are monitored by a top-down camera. The robotic car contraption looks like a fish tank on wheels.
According to these scientists, the camera in the “fish-operated vehicle” uses technology that is motion sensitive. Whenever a fish swims close to the side of the fish tank, the vehicle moves and the fish is awarded with food. These scientists claim that with training the fish learned that their movements in the tank corresponds to the movement of the vehicle on land.
The study indicated that the fish were trained to be able to reach a specific target at the opposite end of the room even when obstacles were in their way. Additionally the researchers claim that the fish’s navigational abilities remain intact even in land-based environments.
Domain transfer methodology is a process by which one species of animal is placed in another species’ environment and carries out a familiar task. In this study, the task was navigation.
Roenna Segovia, a professor at Ben-Gurion University who studies behavior of fish, said, “if you look at the phylogenetic tree of evolution, the beach that we sit on and the branch that fish sit on just diverged away 450 million years ago.”
Professor Segovia also said that fish are not primitive, its just that fish “developed in a very different world from us.” Fish, according to Professor Segovia, have to solve sophisticated issues in their environment just like humans have to solve problems in their environment.
During the first phase of the experiment, the study indicated that the goldfish struggled to figure out how the navigational system works. The fish then according to the study, “were able to operate the vehicle, explore the new environment, and reach target regardless of the starting point, all while avoiding dead-ends and correcting location inaccuracies.”
This study involved six goldfish named after characters from Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice”. The biggest fish measured 7 inches and weighed around 4.2 oz.. And each fish received 10 driving lessons. The two star students of the school of driving fish were Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley according to researchers.
This study published in Behavioral Brain Research Journal helps to debunk the fable that a goldfish’s memory lasts only a few seconds or maybe it just proves that driving doesn’t require great memory.
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IF A FISH CAN LEARN TO DRIVE, THEN THAT LET’S US KNOW WHATEVER WE WANT TO DO, IT IS UP TO US. NOTHING CAN STOP YOU BUT YOU.
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