• Question: Do aquarium fish have a shorter memory than fish that live in the ocean?

    Asked by to Aimee, Chris, Dave, Greig, Laurence on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Laurence Perreault Levasseur

      Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      No, they have the same memory span. Different fish species do have different memory capabilities, but the same species in the sea and in an aquarium has similar memory abilities. Actually, did you know that a lot of the species we have in aquariums started their lives in the sea (or, for most fish we keep in aquarium, rivers and lakes), were caught in the wild before being transported by plane and sold in pet shops?

      There is also a lot of misconceptions on the length of the memory of fish. There has been many experiments where some fish in captivity were trained to associate every feeding time with a loud sound played in a speaker when they were babies. The fish are then released in the while for few months, until the fish grow up, the fish were not fed (them being in the wild) and no sounds were played. Then after between 4 to 6 months, the sound is played again, and the fish returned!! That has been shown to work for, for example, minnows, sticklebacks, guppies and goldfish, among many other!

      Personally, I find that my goldfish knows who I am. Every time I enter the room he knows he is going to get food, so he starts going crazy and swimming everywhere at the top of the water in the hope of getting food!

    • Photo: Dave Jones

      Dave Jones answered on 16 Jun 2014:


      I don’t think so, but it probably varies quite a lot between fish just as it does between humans. One thing is for sure, a good memory and a healthy brain needs lots of stimulating things to keep it working well and keep your memory in good shape. I’m sure fish that live in the ocean have plenty of things to keep them occupying, looking for food, evading predators, all sorts, while fish in aquariums maybe don’t have that much. So, while they probably have pretty similar abilities, perhaps the ocean fish are just a little bit sharper!

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