Goldfish memory

Remember Dory in Finding Nemo? The writers of Finding Nemo created her as a very forgetful character. This is probably due to the reputation of fish as the stupidest animal. It was belief that goldfish has about three-second memory span. Imagine that... no wonder that those fishes in the aquarium look so happy, talk about new experience every three second! You can't be bored or sad living in such a small space.

As comedian Jasper Carrot sketched two goldfishes in a tank:
+ hey, a castle
- what?
+ a castle
- what is a castle?
+ a what?

However recent studies proved otherwise. Cullum Brown of University of Edinburgh found that the Queensland’s crimson spotted rainbow fishes retain their memory for 11 months. That's about one third of their three-year life span, which in human term is equal to remember one incident for about 25 years of your life.

Other study by Yoichi Oda of Osaka University revealed that some goldfishes act like the dog in the famous Pavlov’s experiment. Those fishes associate human with food, so whenever people walk into the room, they -those fishes, not people- will come to the glass of their tank. It proves that goldfish can do ‘associative learning’.

Fishes aren't dim wits after all...