One of the TV presenters joked unsuccessfully about Michael Phelps, comparing his memory with the memory of fish, marking it as an interval of three seconds. Is it really that the mental abilities of fish are so insignificant, or, on the contrary, did the journalist undeservedly offend both the great athlete and the aquatic inhabitants?
What is the memory of a fish
The misconception about the three-second memory is already refuted by ordinary lovers of aquarium pets. Each of them determines the memory time of fish in different ways. Someone allocates a short memory period of 2 minutes, someone gives other numbers, but everyone agrees that it is possible to develop the habit of swimming to the place of food on a knock or other conditioned signal. Many fish can distinguish the owner of the aquarium from a stranger.
When studying the life of carps, it was found that they can form stable groups, breaking up and gathering again.
It does not matter the age of the community members. The members of the "family" do not move randomly, but following certain routes. They have their own permanent places of feeding, lodging, shelter. This alone proves thatfish have such a short memory.
At the same time, each group has its own "veteran" who can somehow pass on his experience to younger friends.
What exactly makes sense to remember
The memory of a fish is significantly different from that of a human. It has selective properties, only what is of vital importance is remembered. River fish remember feeding places, resting places, members of the flock, natural enemies. There are two types of fish memory - long-term and short.
Aquarium fish also remember the information they need. Unlike their free counterparts, they are also able to keep in mind the personality of the owner, the time of feeding. Many experienced fish lovers notice that if they feed their pets by the hour, then during the approximate feeding time, all the babies gather in one area waiting for food.
They are also able to remember all the inhabitants of the aquarium. This allows them to detect newcomers who are hooked into the aquarium. Some fish are interested in exploring new residents, some shun strangers.
In order to reliably answer the question "do fish have memory?", Various experiments were carried out.
Australian experience
An experiment conducted by an Australian student is particularly noteworthy. He placed a beacon where he dropped food for his pets. Moreover, he placed it in different places so that the fish could remember exactly the mark and did this 13 seconds before the distribution of food. This went on for three weeks. The first days of the fishit took at least a minute to gather at the distribution point. By the end of the experiment, they had already completed this task in five seconds.
Then the researcher took a break of six days and distributed food without a beacon. After resuming the experiment, he was surprised to find that after the descent of the beacon, it took the fish only 4 seconds to swim to the place.
This showed that both long-term and short-term memory are fully developed in fish. That is, they remembered the event that happened a week ago, and they had the patience to wait a dozen and a half seconds before distributing food after the beacon was lowered.
Experiment with cichlids
Somewhat different experience to determine the memory of fish, conducted by scientists from Canada. They tried to figure out if cichlids are able to remember a specific feeding place that is not associated with an identification mark.
For three days they poured food into the aquarium at one particular spot. By the end of the experiment, most of the 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 one. There they spent 12 days. Then they were returned to their native aquarium. The scientists found that all the fish were swimming in the exact area where they were given food twelve days ago.
Many other experiments have been done. Of particular interest is the experience of Japanese researchers, where fish with transparent bodies were studied, and scientists could visually study the work of the brain using the introduced labels.sentient beings.
In any case, numerous experiments, practical observations have shown that the memory of a fish is not fiction, and it significantly exceeds three seconds. Not every person is able to store information for as long as these creatures. So it is not known who was more offended by the above-named TV presenter - Michael Phelps or fish.
