Fish aren't thick: scientist

David Braithwaite
September 12, 2006 SMH

Fish can be trained en masse and then used to train other fish

Watch this space ... "It's completely ridiculous that an animal could survive without a memory," says Dr Brown.

Having a memory like a goldfish could actually be a good thing, says a Sydney scientist who has spent 10 years proving fish are not as dumb as we think.

Fish are not the bowl-circling dimwits we imagine and could be as socially able as monkeys and elephants, Dr Culum Brown of Macquarie University says.

The biology lecturer has spent the past decade putting fish through learning and memory tests, which he says shows they are much deeper thinkers than they look.

For a start, Dr Brown says the three-second memory of goldfish is a myth: "It's completely ridiculous that an animal could survive without a memory."

Fish are so clever, Dr Brown says, that those schooled in survival skills can even teach their captivity-raised peers how to get by in the sea.

To help prove his theories, Dr Brown put rainbow fish into a tank with a mock trawler net with a single hole and watched how long it took them to find an escape route.

"Without any prior experience the fish learned where the hole was in about five runs," he says.
A year later, the same fish managed to find the hole on their first try, which Dr Brown says shows they easily recalled the skills they had learned.

In another study, Dr Brown scared intertidal gobies from a rock pool and as they dived for safety found they plopped precisely in surrounding pools.

"This suggests that fish are able to form mental maps similar to those people use when planning a route to a familiar destination," he says.

Dr Brown also studies "social learning" among fish, where fish trained to recognise predators and wild food teach captivity-bred fish how to survive.

"Fish can be trained en masse and then used to train other fish," he says.

"What we've found is the latter groups of fish learn more rapidly when ... placed with trained fish."

The research could prove useful to the aquaculture industry, Dr Brown says.