From water to land: How goldfish have been taught to drive

Nothing fishy to sea here.

Jan. 11, 2022

From water to land: How goldfish have been taught to drive

Imagine you’re on the road rushing to work and just as you’re about to turn, someone cuts you off. Your temper flares, very colorful words are already at your lips as you turn to curse the other driver, and then you see…a fish?

Well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but fish are learning how to drive.

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University have developed a fish-operated vehicle (FOV) fitted with lidar, a remote sensing technology that allows the vehicle’s ground location and the fish’s movements inside a mounted water tank to be tracked using a pulsed laser light. Through this, the fish's movements are translated into instructions for the wheels of the vehicle to follow.

One of the researchers, neuroscientist Ronen Segev, took to Twitter to share a video of a goldfish successfully operating the vehicle in the study, led by Shachar Givon and Matan Samina with Ohad Ben Shahar. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether space representation and navigation mechanisms are dependent on the species, brain structures, or ecological system, or whether they share general and universal properties.

A driving school of fish.

Just like us, the six goldfish — who were named after Pride and Prejudice characters — in this study had to attend driving lessons. Each fish received roughly 10 driving lessons and were given specific targets to reach in order for their navigational skills to be tested. They were rewarded with food after reaching each target set by the researchers.

The goldfish were tasked to navigate the vehicle towards a visual target in the terrestrial environment, with the researchers changing the starting positions and adding decoy targets to ensure the fish were not just memorizing the path to the target. The best part is that they were able to do so! They could even avoid dead-ends and correct inaccuracies in their navigation.

All of the fish achieved better times the more they repeated it, taking quicker and more direct routes to the target each time, suggesting that fish can learn from their environment and adjust according to it.

The result of the study showed that fish are able to transfer their space representation and navigation skills in an environment not limited to their natural one.