Fish are apparently much more cunning than we think, sans sea slugs, according to new Australian research.
So surely total unrecall by politicians, may prove unfathomable in light of new evidence which suggests even Nemo could recall most of his past.
Australian reserachers have discovered that fish can remember and adapt, way beyond three seconds and are very intelligent creatures.
The total recall of fish and the sometimes total unrecall of politicians begs the question how politicians will be able to get away with such forgetfulness. Especially in the upcoming months and years of promises about Super City Auckland being so Super
President Clinton said ‘I don’t recall’ only eight times, when he was nearly impeached, but the then US president uttered 71 ”I don’t remembers”, 62 ”I don’t knows”, 17 ”I’m not sures”, six ”I don’t have any specific recollections” … And so on.
And, just when you thought it was safe to buy an aquarium, the enduring myth that goldfish swim happily around because they have a three-second memory span has been thoroughly debunked, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the weekend.
”That fable has been totally put to bed now,” said a Macquarie University behavioural ecologist, Culum Brown. ”It’s well established that fish have relatively long memories and to be honest it was ludicrous that anyone ever thought otherwise. They’re intelligent creatures that learn and adapt.”
The research underpinning this view will feature in a new edition of the fish expert’s bible, Fish Cognition and Behaviour, to be published this year.
As well as editing the book, Dr Brown has carried out original research of his own on allegedly-forgetful fish. In one experiment, fish in a tank were assailed by a trawler-like mechanism and had to figure out an escape route. It took about five attempts until the fish mastered the art of escape, but when they were subjected to the same experience a year later, they remembered what to do the first time round.
”This was for fish that live about two years in the wild, so the evidence is that the memory was ongoing for much of their lifespan,” Dr Brown said. ”That was about the record for fish memory findings so far, but the results are limited more by the difficulty of repeating the experiment years later than it is by the memories of the fish.”
The animated film Finding Nemo, which features an absent-minded fish character named Dory, divides fish researchers.
”I suppose I’m a glass half full kind of guy, but I really loved that film because I think it demonstrated how absurd it is that anything could live without a memory,” Dr Brown said.
