The Goldfish 3 second Memory A Myth or A Fact?
What is the span of goldfish memory?
Do they even have the capacity to remember?
These are the questions that this article will attempt to answer, as well as giving you some great information on goldfish in general.
Well do goldfish have a memory? As per some sets of research, scientists were able to conclude that the goldfish memory last around 3 seconds, depending on the breed. You may find this amazing and also disturbing at the same time! This that every time your goldfish looks at you, it isn’t able to recognize you, therefore there is no possibility of creating a close relationship with your goldfish.
Also there is another thing that goldfish owners should take into consideration and that is the fact that goldfish are going to be constantly seeing and re-recognizing the same features in and around your tank or aquarium. If you never change the look of your tank, it can be detrimental to the life of your Gold fish. You have to remember that they are living creatures and one thing that all living creatures have in common, is that they need constant stimulation to stay alive.
If your fish never has the opportunity to see something new every so often, they’re brains will never grow, this is because they are only being stimulated by the same images, time after time. Do your fish a favor and change your tank around as often as possible. The goldfish memory is weak, however you must remember that the brain has other functions also and they have to be stimulated in order for it to keep running.
Can you increase goldfish memory?
Well like any other part of the brain, it has the potential to improve as well as diminish. Different breeds have different time spans of memory.
As per research studies on Goldfish it can be proved that Goldfish have a longer memory span. One of such Research is carried out by the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth in 2003. Goldfish were trained to push a lever to earn a food reward; when the lever was fixed to work only for an hour a day, the fish soon learned to activate it at the correct time.
Goldfish have a memory-span of at least three months and can distinguish between different shapes, colors and sounds. By using positive reinforcement, goldfish can be trained to recognize and to react to light signals of different colors or to perform tricks, such as the limbo, slalom, fetch, and soccer. Fish respond to certain colors most evidently in relation to feeding. Fish learn to anticipate feedings provided they occur at around the same time every day.
The Discovery Channel’s show Mythbusters tested the contemporary legend that goldfish only had a memory span of 3 seconds and they were able to prove that goldfish had a longer memory span than commonly believed. The experiment involved training the fish to navigate a maze. It was evident that they were able to remember the correct path of the maze after more than a month.
One of the best ways to do keep your Goldfish happy is by changing the look and feel of your tank consistently. Colors are one of the easiest recognized things from a goldfish memory point of view. Therefore it’s advised to add in bright colors and to change them as often as possible. Just by making these small changes, you will notice a difference in the energy levels of your goldfish and they will generally live for a lot longer than usual.
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