Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2009-10-20
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October 20, 2009 :
1) Fish are able to learn behaviour to get food.
This New York Times article reports fish can learn.
[A] research team led by Ulrike E. Siebeck at the University of
Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, trained damselfish to feed from a
feeding tube to which they attached a variety of visual stimuli. The
latter included a three-dimensional latex disc, a two-dimensional blue
disc painted on a plastic board, or black circles or propeller patterns
on white boards. The fish were rewarded with food when they repeatedly
tapped the stimulus — not the tube — with their snout or mouth.
Remarkably, the fish also learned when the food reward was delayed and
delivered far from the stimulus. The damselfish exhibited what is called
anticipatory behavior, in that they would tap the image and then swim
quickly to the other end of their tank in anticipation of their food
reward.
...
The fish were even better at color discrimination, tapping the correct
target more than 90 percent of the time.
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