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Asked by Katya to Carrie, Ellen, Rupert on 16 Mar 2017.
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Carrie Ijichi answered on 16 Mar 2017:
No that one’s not true. You can train fish to learn new things and they can remember experiences that gave them pleasure or suffering so they know whether to avoid or approach that thing the next time they’re in that situation. You can see how that would be really useful. To do that, they need to remember things for quite some time.
They might not be geniuses but they deserve more credit that 3 seconds!
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Ellen Williams answered on 16 Mar 2017:
No that is a myth! Sorry to reference the Daily Mail (shame on me! but I did think it was a nice and accessible source) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1106884/Three-second-memory-myth-Fish-remember-months.html – this article provides details about a study scientists did when they trained fish to recognise a sound associated with feeding time. 5 months later they replayed that sound and the fish returned again (as they had been trained to do to get the food reward!). I guess it stands to reason because if they did only have a 3 second memory they wouldn’t get very far in the wild! They would be like a real life Dory!!!
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Rupert Marshall answered on 16 Mar 2017:
No it’s not true. Even small fishes can remember for a long time. If you train them to find food somewhere they will still remember even if you stop them going there for a while. Like us, they will forget eventually. But they will still know the rough area even if not the exact place – like us trying to find the biscuits in the cupboard: we know which cupboard but maybe not which shelf.
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