Two fish are swimming in a tank... one turns to the other and asks: “Know how to drive this thing?”
Strange as it may seem, that old joke has now become a reality after scientists worked out how to get goldfish to navigate a specially-designed Fish Operated Vehicle.
A team of biomedical engineers and neuroscientists trained six different fish to successfully steer the four wheeler.
The fish were placed in a small tank mounted in place of the driving seat on top of the FOV.
It accelerated, turned and stopped as the pilot fish moved it towards a pink target to earn themselves a food pellet.
The FOV has a camera, a computer and light detection technology which track the pilot fish’s movements. Each fish was given 15 minutes to get used to it before each 30-minute trial began.
Like learner drivers, they gradually improved and even reached their destinations when targets were moved and decoy targets of different colours were added.
To avoid over-feeding the fish, each study session lasted for a maximum of 20 trials.
Shachar Givon, one of the leaders of the study at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel, said: “It hints that navigational ability is universal.
“Second, it shows goldfish have the ability to learn a complex task in an environment 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.”
