Fish memory - three seconds or more?

One of the TV anchors unsuccessfully joked about Michael Phelps, comparing his memory with the memory of fish, denoting it in three seconds. Is it really that the thinking abilities of fish are so insignificant or, on the contrary, did the journalist undesirably offend both the great athlete and the water inhabitants?

What is the memory of fish

The misconception about three-second memory is refuted by ordinary amateurs of aquarium pets. Time of fish memory each of them defines differently. Someone allocates a period of short memory in 2 minutes, someone gives other figures, but all agree that one can develop the habit of swim up to the place of food by knocking or other conditional signal. Many fish can distinguish the owner of the aquarium from an outsider.

When studying the life of carp it was established that they can form stable groups, decaying and reassembling again. It does not matter the age of community members. Moving members of the "family" is not chaotic, but following certain routes. They have their own regular places of feeding, sleeping, shelter. This alone proves that not so fish have a short memory.

At the same time, each group has its own "veteran" who can somehow transfer his experience to younger friends.

What exactly does it make sense to remember

The memory of fish differs significantly from the human. It has selective properties, only what is of vital importance is remembered. River fish remember the places of feeding, the place of rest, members of the pack, natural enemies. Separate the two types of fish memory - long-term and short.

Aquarium fish also memorize the information they need. Unlike their free colleagues, they are able to keep in mind also the identity of the owner, the time of feeding. Many lovers of fish with experience notice that if they feed their animals by the clock, then during the approximate period of feeding time all babies gather in one area in anticipation of eating.

They are also able to remember all the inhabitants of the aquarium. This allows them to detect newcomers, who are placed in the aquarium. Some fish with interest study new tenants, some shun outsiders.

To reliably answer the question "is there a memory in the fish?", Various experiments were carried out.

Australian experience

Especially noteworthy is the experiment conducted by an Australian student. He put the beacon in the place where he threw food to his pets. And he placed it in different places so that the fish could remember the tag and did it 13 seconds before the food was distributed. This lasted for three weeks. The first days the fish needed at least a minute to gather in the place of distribution. By the end of the experiment, they had coped with this task for about five seconds.

Then the researcher took a break in six days and distributed a feed without a beacon. After the renewal of the experiment, he was surprised to find that after the descent of the beacon the fish took only 4 seconds to swim to the place.

This showed that the fish has a long-term memory as well as a short memory. That is, they remembered the event that happened a week ago, and they had the patience to wait fifteen seconds before the feed distribution after the launch of the beacon.

Experiment with cichlids

A slightly different experience to determine the memory of fish, scientists from Canada. They tried to figure out whether cichlids are able to remember exactly the specific place of feeding, not associated with the identification mark.

Within three days they poured food into the aquarium in one particular place. By the end of the experiment, most fish swam there. Then, all the cichlids were transplanted into another aquarium, which was completely different both in structure and in volume from the first. There they spent 12 days. Then they were returned to their native aquarium. The scientists found that all the fish swam exactly in the area where they were given food twelve days ago.

Many other experiments were carried out. Of particular interest is the experience of Japanese researchers, where they studied fish with transparent bodies, and scientists on the input labels could visually study the workings of the brain of living beings.

In any case, numerous experiments, experiments of practical observation have shown that fish memory is not a fiction, and it significantly exceeds three seconds. Not everyone is able to store information as long as these creatures. So it is not known who was more offended by the aforementioned TV presenter - Michael Phelps or the fish.