Posted on 01/05/2022 10:13:08 AM PST by Red Badger
If the arrival of 2022 has you thinking “new year, new me” get in line, because the humble goldfish has taken reinvention to a whole new level in a recent study that's got them driving about on land. Proving they are capable of dominating (read: navigating) alien environments, participant fish recently got behind the wheel of custom fish-operated vehicles (FOVs) to reach targets in return for a treat. That’s right everybody: fish can drive now.
The illuminating research comes from scientists at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, who wanted to explore if navigational skills are dependent on species, environment or brain structure, or if animals share generalizable skills which they can incorporate when, say, dumped into a water tank with wheels on dry land. Their results were published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.
"One way to explore this issue behaviorally is by domain transfer methodology, where one species is embedded in another species’ environment and must cope with an otherwise familiar (in our case, navigation) task," wrote the study authors. "Here we push this idea to the limit by studying the navigation ability of a fish in a terrestrial environment."
The navigational task involved goldfish “driving” towards a visual target in their terrestrial environment which they could see through the walls of the tank. Curious as to how exactly one teaches a goldfish to drive? We were, too.
"Animal training usually follows a typical reinforcement (conditioning) procedure that “teaches” it what is a desired behavior," Ohad Ben-Shahar told IFLScience. "In our case, it was based on allowing the fish to randomly 'explore' the FOV and its behavior, receiving reward (a food pellet) once it reached a designated target. After a while, usually several days, the fish becomes quite proficient in understanding what is its target and that it needs to drive the FOV towards it."
VIDEO AT LINK....................
The FOV, which facilitated the sequel Need For Speed: Fresh Out The Bowl (which hotly follows The Fast And The Furious: Rodent Rage) was effectively a tank atop a platform on wheels that reacted to the goldfish's movements. The trained fish were then able to direct the FOV by swimming in the direction they wanted to go in. There were six drivers in total, all of which were goldfish (Carassius auratus) and ranged in sex.
Not only were the fish able to reach the targets, but they could overcome obstacles, dead ends and wrong turns, and weren’t fooled by false targets laid out by the researchers. Their FOV Formula One demonstrates that the navigational skills of fish aren’t dependent on a watery environment, and that something more universal may be at play in deciding how we find our way.
"The study hints that navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment,” said lead author Shachar Givon in a statement emailed to IFLScience. “Second, it shows that goldfish have the cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely unlike the one they evolved in. As anyone who has tried to learn how to ride a bike or to drive a car knows, it is challenging at first.”
Could your next Amazon parcel arrive via goldfish courier service? Come on, Jeffrey, you can do it.
And the California DMV has issued them Driver's Licenses without requiring ANY documentation whatsoever.
That’s Larson, right?
They drive like female goldfish.
Cool.
Maybe Ben-Gurion University should check out our walking catfish...
You heard it first here folks.
5.56mm
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Love it...:)
Old fishing story:
I went fishing this morning but after a short time I ran out of worms.
Then I saw a cottonmouth with a frog in its mouth.
Frogs are good bass bait.
Knowing the snake couldn’t bite me with the frog in its mouth, I grabbed it right behind the head, took the frog, and put it in my bait bucket.
Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bit. So, I grabbed my bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a little whiskey in its mouth. Its eyes rolled back, and it went limp.
I released the snake into the lake without incident and carried on fishing, using the frog.
Not long after, I felt a nudge on my foot. It was that dang snake… with two more frogs.
Fish quickly learn what the source of their food is.
Well, that seems useful.
I wonder if those fish can get a CDL license. Maybe they can drive trucks and fix the supply chain problems.
This could give the Asian women some competition!
Might have a little trouble with the test..............................the written part, not the driving part.............
There’s lake we go to at a nearby park that has literally hundreds of turtles of various kinds.
People bring food like old bread and fish pellets to feed them.
You walk out on the crossover bridge and they all come running, er swimming, like chickens, from all over the lake when they see you, without you having to throw them any food yet!..............
Further proof this study has “legs.” Think about it… dems say “defund the police,” instead we fully fund the driving sharks. Picture some thief coming out of a CVS with arms full of stolen items. Shark spots ‘em and thinks: YAY, REWARD! Taxpayers save all the money spent on police salaries and benefits, court costs, jail costs, and repeat offenders.
They are already better than the entire nation of Italy...................
Hell, the invasive snakehead fish breed that the Chinese introduced into a pond in my part of Maryland can navigate on land WITHOUT WHEELS. They simply crawl slowly from pond to pond and from pond to streams/rivers.
But it is an interesting experiment.
You're right. It would be hard to take written exam without hands. They should train an octopus instead. It should be able to handle it, but leave the goldfish in the tank: snack for later.
Yes. He’s making new cartoons on his website
I was down in Grand Cayman years back. There was a reef out in front of the hotel on Seven Mile Beach. The store across the street sold these fish food pellet packets that you could take underwater.
I swam out into the water about a hundred yards, dove down and pulled out the pellet packet. EVERY fish within 100 yards was on me instantly. They were grabbing them out of my hand, hitting me in the scuba mask, my chest. FREAKED ME OUT! It was feeding time.
I dropped the packet and swam back to shore. I don’t think I was the first person to feed these fish the pellets.
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