Do they fishtail when they hit black ice? Do they carp about traffic? The jokes almost make themselves, but it's true – in new research from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a goldfish has successfully "driven" a robotic car.
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Hoping to discover whether animals' innate navigational abilities are universal or restricted to their home environments, BGU researchers designed a set of wheels placed under a goldfish tank. The wheels were tricked out with a camera to record and translate the fish's movements into wheel movements.
To test whether the fish was really navigating, researchers placed a clearly visible target on the wall opposite the tank. After a few days of training, the fish navigated to the target. Moreover, they were able to do so even if they hit a wall "en route." They also avoided being fooled by false targets researchers placed in their paths, making them more savvy than some Waze users.
Video: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
The team discovered that a goldfish's navigational ability supersedes its watery environs.
"The study hints that navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment. 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's challenging at first," says Shachar Givon, a Ph.D. student in the Life Sciences Department in the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
Givon conducted the study with Matan Samina, an MSc student in the Biomedical Engineering Department in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Professor Ohad Ben Shahar of the Computer Sciences Department and head of the School of Brain Sciences and Cognition, and Professor Ronen Segev of the Life Sciences & Biomedical Engineering Departments.
Their findings were published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Behavioural Brain Research.
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