Do you have the good fortune to possess a vehicle? You like taking long journeys and roaming about town in your vehicle. You’ve been having so much fun that you’ve completely forgotten about getting pet food! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this bunch. This is because they can drive well on their own to the pet food store.
After conducting multiple studies, a recent research discovered that fish can travel on land, giving a whole different twist to the expression “go fish.”
Could goldfish move about on land like they did in water?
In order to see if goldfish could move around on land the same way they did in the water, researchers at Ben-Gurion University built a fish tank that was on wheels. To put it gently, the results are astounding, to say the least. In an article published in Science reports, it seems that the fish had no issue driving the automobile to a particular reward wall inside a room.
A “fish-operated vehicle,” or FOV, is a kind of go-kart that is controlled by a fish. Lidar laser sensor, an integrated camera, and motion recognition software all work together to maintain tabs on the fish’s movements. The researchers inserted six goldfish into the tank one at a time, to measure their ability to drive the tank. A room was then built so that they could roll the tank around based on how the fish swam. For each time they got their tank close enough to a pink board on the wall, they got food.
To the surprise of the experts, each goldfish was able to attain the goal just after a few days of practice.
And this was true regardless of where the fish began. This was true even after the position of the board was altered. As stated in Behavioural Brain Research, the goldfish were interrupted by a wall or boards of various colors at times.
The co-authors of the study, Shachar Givon and Matan Samina spoke to the Israel Times about their observations. It seems that the fish were able to drive the vehicle, investigate the new surroundings, and achieve their destination. In addition, it was done independently of where the journey began, all while overcoming dead ends and fixing geographical mistakes.
The study demonstrates that goldfish aren’t just good at finding their way around in their own home. It is possible for fish to learn new abilities in a new environment. Eventually, the team hopes to uncover how fish might learn to take longer routes in more natural settings by experimenting with this hypothesis. According to Givon, who spoke with Live Science, they want the fish to be able to go outdoors and navigate through a realistic human habitat. Researchers may be able to get a better idea of how fish make choices in more dynamic and unfamiliar surroundings by studying this.
What about putting rats or other land animals in improvised submarines to see how they perform underwater? That is certainly highly plausible, according to the experts.
