• Question: Is it true fish only have a five second memory?

    Asked by nessy123 to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 19 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Louise Walkin

      Louise Walkin answered on 19 Nov 2012:


      I’m not sure where this fact originally came from but everyone seems to believe it! I don’t think it is true as research has been done where they fed fish when playing music and up to five months afterwards when they played music again – the fish swam for the food. This happened when the fish were in captivity and also when they were put into the wild! Quite exciting! It’s possible that they might have an even longer memory…! 🙂

    • Photo: Marcus Wilson

      Marcus Wilson answered on 19 Nov 2012:


      I don’t really know here this came form, i think its because someone noticed that fish move back and forth in the same fish tank and people thought they forgot what wa on one side by the time they got to the other.

      Loads of experiemnst have shown that goldfish ahve quite good memories, they have beentrained to get through munderwater mazes and the experiemnst mentioned by Louise.

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 19 Nov 2012:


      The problem is probably that it is not that easy to train a goldfish, or to test one’s memory. So good scientific data about goldfish memory has been difficult to obtain. But it does seem to be a common false belief – they said so on QI so it must be so!

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