Israeli Researcher Reveals Goldfish Ability To Navigate On Land, Can Be Taught To 'drive' A Vehicle

Goldfish illustration. (Unsplash/pouria oskuie)

JAKARTA - Could goldfish have the ability to navigate on land, not in the water where they usually live? Asked Israeli researchers, the answer is, goldfish have the ability to navigate on land.

For the research team from Ben-Gurion University published in the peer-reviewed journal 'Behavioral Brain Research', the goldfish were trained to use a wheeled platform, known as a Fish Operated Vehicle (FOV).

The FOV is movable and its direction changes in reaction to the movement of fish in the water tank mounted on the platform, citing The Washington Post Jan. 12.

The job of the goldfish is to "drive" the robotic vehicle towards an observable target through the walls of the fish tank. The vehicle is equipped with lidar, short for light and range detection, a remote sensing technology that uses a laser to collect data on land locations and the location of fish in the tank.

"Surprisingly, it didn't take long for the fish to learn to drive a vehicle. At first, they were confused. They didn't know what was going on, but they realized very quickly that there was a correlation between their movement and the movement of the machine they were using," said researcher Shachar Givon, citing Reuters.

Six goldfish, each receiving about 10 driving lessons, took part in the study. Every time one of them hit the target set by the researchers, it was rewarded with food.

Goldfish illustration. (Unsplash/Gabriel Kidegho)

According to researchers, some goldfish are better drivers than others.

"There are excellent fish that perform very well and there are mediocre fish, which show control over the vehicle but are less adept at driving it," said biology professor and neuroscientist Ronen Segev.

Showing that a fish has the cognitive ability to navigate outside of its natural aquatic environment could expand scientific knowledge of the animal's important navigational skills.

"We humans think of ourselves as very special and many think of fish as primitive, but this is not true. There are other creatures that are very important and very intelligent," said Segev.

Israel's FOV is not the world's first fish-driven car. In 2014, a design lab in the Netherlands installed a fish tank in a vehicle equipped with a webcam.

The camera is able to follow the fish and translate their movements towards the go-kart. A video demonstrating the prototype shows the vehicle moving rapidly as fish swim from one side of the tank to the other.

Driving experiments have also been carried out using other animals, including rats and, reportedly, dogs. Navigation is an important ability for animal survival and the Israeli researchers say that fish possessing the cognitive ability to navigate outside of their natural environment "suggests universality in the way space is represented throughout the environment."