They'll never be musical connoisseurs, but it turns out you can teach your goldfish a few musical tricks ... like telling famous classical composers apart (Bach and Stravinsky, to be precise). A word of caution: it will take time and a lot of patience.
In a new study published in the journal Behavioural Processes, researches describe how they successfully trained goldfish to distinguish between the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky ... although it did take about 100 training sessions to get there! Keio University's Dr Kazutaka Shinozuka and his team serenaded the fish with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and, with the help of some edible encouragement, trained their study subjects to react to the music by tugging on a small red bead suspended in their tank on a piece of cord.
“Goldfish the world over are celebrating the demise of the pesky 15-second memory myth that's plagued them for so long”
After some initial conditioning, the fish were separated into two groups – one group for Bach and one for Stravinsky. In each group, the fish were taught to bite the beads only when a 20-second clip of their selected composer was playing. They were rewarded with a pellet of food when they got it right. The results? The goldfish performed successfully about 75% of the time – even though, as the Telegraph reports, researchers mixed things up and played clips of different sections of the same piece.
Now, you may be asking why scientists would spend their time serenading goldfish with classical music. The study's researchers say the aim was to shed light on the ability of the fish to detect complex auditory signals. Whether you think that makes for silly science or not, we're pretty sure of one thing: goldfish the world over are celebrating the demise of the pesky 15-second memory myth that's plagued them for so long. After all, if you can tell your Bach from your Stravinsky, you're a forgetful goldfish no more!
