Are animals’ innate navigational abilities universal or are they restricted to their home environments? Hope we all know about ‘Gustav, the Goldfish‘, a short story written by Dr. Seuss. While similar to that, can you imagine if it happens in reality?
A New Discovery
It’s not a scene from a children’s book or a futuristic movie. It’s an animal behavior experiment at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where researchers have successfully trained several goldfish to operate a robotic vehicle. They wanted to see if goldfish’s ability to navigate (find their way) depends on their natural environment, or if they could navigate even under very unusual conditions. They learned that goldfish can find their way, even on dry land. The findings were published in the Behavioural Brain Research journal.
Experiment Process
To test the goldfish, the researchers created a special robotic car that could drive forward, backward, and from side to side. The scientists called the car a “Fish Operated Vehicle” (FOV).
The FOVs are essentially a fish tank on wheels, equipped with a computer, camera and a LIDAR — a device that targets objects with lasers and measures their distances. The fish stays immersed in water, where it can breathe, and the tank responds to the fish’s movement. Basically, when the fish swims, the tank moves. A computer, camera, electric motors and omni-wheels give the fish control of the vehicle.
A goldfish was placed inside a water tank on the FOV. Using a special system, the car tracked where the goldfish was and what direction it was swimming. The FOV would then automatically move in the same direction.
The scientists worked with six different goldfish, each receiving around 10 driving lessons. They tested them by placing the car in a small room with a pink target on one side. After a few days of training, the fish navigated to the target. Moreover, they were able to do so even if they were interrupted in the middle by hitting a wall and they were not fooled by false targets placed by the researchers. The fish were rewarded with a food pellet when the car touched the target.
Researchers’ View Point
“Surprisingly, it doesn’t take the fish a long time to learn how to drive the vehicle. They’re confused at first. They don’t know what’s going on. But they’re very quick to realize that there is a correlation between their movement and the movement of the machine that they’re in,” said researcher Shachar Givon.
“There were very good fish that were doing excellent and there were mediocre fish that showed control of the vehicle but were less proficient in driving it,” said biology professor and neuroscientist Ronen Segev.
“We humans think of ourselves as very special and many think of fish as primitive, but this is not correct,” said Segev. “There are other very important and very smart creatures.”
Results
At first, it took the fish about a half an hour to drive to the target. But by the end of the experiment, they were able to complete the same challenge in less than a minute. Not only did the goldfish show that they could drive to the target, they weren’t fooled by fake targets of other colors. They were also able to get themselves free when the car was stuck next to a wall.
Conclusions
“The study hints that navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment. Second, it shows that goldfish have the cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely unlike the one they evolved in. As anyone who has tried to learn how to ride a bike or to drive a car knows, it is challenging at first,” says Shachar Givon, a PhD student in the Life Sciences Department in the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
Though the experiment showed that the fish were able to navigate to a target, it’s not likely that the fish knew they were controlling a car. They may not have even realized they were moving on land. The researchers say that in the future it may be possible to change the FOV to test these ideas.
Showing that a fish has the cognitive capability to navigate outside its natural environment of water can expand scientific knowledge of animals’ essential navigation skills, the researchers say.
Conducted and Supported by
The study was conducted by Givon, Matan Samina, an MSc student in the Biomedical Engineering Department in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Prof. Ohad Ben Shahar of the Computer Sciences Department and head of the School of Brain Sciences and Cognition, and Prof. Ronen Segev of the Life Sciences & Biomedical Engineering Departments.
The research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation — First Program (grant no. 555/19), the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 211/15), a Human Frontiers Science Foundation grant RGP0016/2019, The Lynne and William Frankel Center for Computer Science, and the Helmsley Charitable Trust through the Agricultural, Biological and Cognitive Robotics Initiative of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
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