Comments on: Teach a Goldfish New Tricks

By: bobby

bobby — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 03:20:30 +0000

This is really cool and i think im gonna try it a couple times and see what happens. i feel that this is very similar to teaching many other animals tricks. especially dogs. i jave trained my dog to go to his cage everytime i grab a treat for him, so that now when i have to leave the house i just grab a treat he goes to his cage and thn i can leave after i give it to him. all animals can be tought tricks with enought time and care.

By: Erin

Erin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:17:00 +0000

This post inspired me to investigate the memory span of horses. I found some really interesting things. Contrary to popular belief they have extraordinary memories. A horse can associate one bad experience with a stimulus and be afraid of it for years! It is always important to address bad behaviors as soon as possible before it becomes second nature to the horse. On the flip side they can commit good experiences to memory as well. That’s why it is crucial to reinforce positive behavior. During trials it has been determined that horses can learn in five different ways relating to their memory. 1. Habituation- repeatedly exposing a horse to a stimulus.
2. Associated Learning- When cueing for a canter the rider clicks his tongue and the horse learns that tongue clicking means canter. The operant type is when a reward is associated with its own behavior. The trainer puts left leg on the horse, if the horse goes right it is rewarded if it goes left nothing.
3. Latent Learning- when a horse subconsciously remembers something like trail routes etc.
4. Imprinting- Exposing horses to frightening stimuli as young as one hour old so in the future the horse will not be afraid.
5. Insight Learning- When a horse is taught to learn. It is similar to operant associated learning but requires a strong bond between horse and rider.

http://www.horsemanmagazine.com/2008/08/understanding-a-horses-memory/

By: Jesse

Jesse — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:39:21 +0000

This post is very informative. The owners though had to find out one way to keep the goldfish paying attention in order to teach it a trick. The way he owner did this was by treating him which almost bribed the goldfish to do something for the treat in return. The link below shows a women who taught her dog to do math (skip to 1:30) and the dog taps in order for a treat! http://www.metacafe.com/watch/21958/maggie_the_mathematic_dog/

By: charlot

charlot — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:23:39 +0000

I found this experiment very interesting and thought it would be almost impossible to teach goldfish tricks. The owners were clever because they came up with accurate ways to teach the goldfish, leading the fish through the trick course by having it follow a piece of food on a stick.
I found information on how goldfish respond to color and light.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1694508. According to David J. Ingle, Goldfish can point out which colors are which and they also reconize colors too. In this experiment scientists shined a light to the color red but the gold fish still knew the color was red even though putting light on the color changes its appearance. So the light being shined on the color did not confuse the goldfish and it has no effect on how the goldfish recognized it.

By: Angelica:D

Angelica:D — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:18:33 +0000

i like this because i like fish.!
all my fish does is sit there and blow bubbles.! i would love to learn this trade and teach my fish tricks.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:50:22 +0000

Thanks for all the comments. I like the new blog look, keep up the good work.

By: Daverniushalam Obykasia

Daverniushalam Obykasia — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:33:15 +0000

Wonderful Post!

By: Jong

Jong — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:12:56 +0000

It was weird to see the fish do those tricks, and I was amazed at what many different things he could do, but not only was the fish smart but I think the owners were smart because they invented ways in which to train the goldfish. In the website below there are two examples of other animals that one would not expect to do any tricks. Also, if you notice in the video, the owner seems to treat the animals just like the other owners did to the other animals. By gifting and training an animal through sweets, in my opinion, is the best way to train an animal to do something. Notice also, the animals in the video respond to the hand motions of the owner, not only though the treats which tells you that the animals learn through body language too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VipNXijeT2k

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:15:34 +0000

Goldfish aren't the only animals that can learn tricks even though we wouldn't expect it. Goldfish could have gotten their intellegence from the fact that they as a species have been around for a long time. Although goldfish have the ability to learn to do things after seeing colors or hearing things occuring in the water (as proven by an experiment done by the University of Plymouth), it is possible to train any animal with a long enough memory span. For example, cats can be trained to do dog tricks as seen here and here (same cat). This cat probably could use some more training as it sometimes doesn't seem to want to do the tricks. As with most other animals being trained, the cat was trained with food as a reward.

By: Vasiliki

Vasiliki — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:44:58 +0000

This video is really cool. Who knew fishes could actually do tricks. Also, a 3 month memory span is actually a decent amount for a fish! That would come in handy for me! I found a video on youtube that shows two fish swimming through a hoop. They were trained by being given a reward(food)when they swim through the hoop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FONdG86GL0U&feature=related