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.
Where did you find that “fish driving a car” cartoon???
Google w ‘Gary Larson’
Uber has a satellite map that allows you to designate your pickup so if they miss its your fault but courier services attempt to rely on address like the postal service.
The thing is that UPS/Fedex/etc apparently dont have the same training/regional knowledge of USPS.
What do I mean?
1. We order a package online.
2. Package is correctly addressed by company filling order.
3. Package arrives at local distribution center.
4. Urban educated delivery driver doesnt understand rural adresses and takes package for a ride with no understanding of where to deliver it.
5. Package is returned to local distribution center and placed in some sort of address resolution center.
6. Address resolution center fabricates an entirely different not even vaguely similar address that is not in geographic area.
7. Package is sent to the distribution center for the imaginary address. (This step may return to repeat step 6 a number of times before continuing to step 8.)
8. Package can not be delivered in imaginary area and is properly re-addressed with original address.
9. Package gets delivered.
How does is the address more correct and deliverable in step 9 when it couldnt be delivered to the same address in step 4? No one can answer that question for me.
Every package, every time. When it arrives we can peel off the address stickers and see where our packages vacationed on their way to us.
Now maybe if I put fish pellets in my front yard the package could get here the first time.
A girl from Asia once showed me how she swims on dry land.
What a cute way to waste taxpayers money (in this case, Israel taxpayers)! Who would dare to argue against lovely goldfish?
Skeptical initially, I have determined that the goldfish is a better driver than my first husband.
I wasn’t...........................
Doing the backstroke or the breast stroke?...................
Golda Meir.................
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