fish can think

Food for thought: fish can think

Sydney (dpa) - People who claim that goldfish can't remember things that happened more than three seconds ago are talking nonsense, an Australian biologist said Sunday.

Fish that Sydney academic Culum Brown has experimented with could find their way out of a trap he set them - and remember how they did it for at least a year afterwards.

Macquarie University's Brown told the Sun Herald that his fish could negotiate an underwater maze by spotting the difference between signs with green triangles and those with red squares.



The smartest in the school read the signs and reached the stash of fish food quickly but even the slowest got the hang of it eventually and found their way to the feeding station.

Even out of the laboratory, fish display intelligence. Brown found that, to get away from what they thought was a predator, fish in rocky pools at the seaside would jump from one pool to another; they couldn't do that unless they had a mental map of where the different pools were.

That fish aren't completely stupid has implications for how we interact with them, Brown said.

If fish can learn to read signs, they can learn to steer clear of fishing boats and fishing nets. And perhaps figures for fish stocks ought to be adjusted to take into account the capacity of fish to keep away from those doing the counting.

Brown reckons that people who keep tropical fish as pets ought to take cognizance of his research and start setting brain-teasers to keep their fishy friends alert and happy.

"I move the tank around every so often and introduce new rocks and plants and logs," he said. "If you look at the amount of activity they engage in afterwards, they are far more active. The change can be a bit stressful for them, but afterwards they love it."