Careful, They Might Hear You

February 21, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
5 Comments

goldfish.jpgDon’t mention any of your passwords while you’re standing near the fish tank. You may come home to find your computer’s been hijacked by your goldfish.

You might feel safe talking about private matters near your pet fish, thinking that they will have forgotten all about it in six seconds, but don’t be fooled, they do remember and it took a 15 year old named Rory Stokes to prove it.

Rory’s findings were reported a couple of days ago in this article at News.com.au. He proved that pet fish have a memory that lasts at least six days and possibly longer.

A 15-year-old South Australian school student has busted the myth that goldfish have a three second memory.

Rory Stokes, from the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide, conducted an experiment to test the commonly held theory that goldfish have short memory spans.

I always knew that the short term memory thing was an urban legend. The fish in the big tank at work rush towards the glass when they see a human heading their way first thing in the morning. They know that a human will feed them in the morning. Once they’ve been fed they ignore any other people wandering past for the rest of the day.

One of the things Rory wanted to demonstrate is that it’s cruel to keep fish in small tanks. The short term memory theory was always a good excuse when people wanted to put fish into a tiny container. They would use the excuse that fish weren’t aware of their cramped environment becuase it looked new to them every six seconds.

I will admit that I’ve never understood the attraction of keeping fish anyway. I think they make a darn good meal but they’re not my idea of a pet.

Now all we need is to find a way for fish to communicate with us. They might then be able to remind us of the things we forget. If their memory lasts for six days or more, that’s about five and a half days longer than some people can remember where they’ve left their keys.



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A fishy tale

January 3, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
2 Comments

FishingTasmania’s Mercury newspaper is reporting a rather fishy story.

In the article, Lost jewellery found in fish, we’re told that a 25 year old woman named Kristy was kneeboarding behind a boat south of Hobart when she was tossed from her board in rough conditions.

In the fall she lost a nose stud from a piercing she had done only a week before Christmas.

Her fiancé was fishing with a friend three days later in the same area and caught a decent haul of fish. When he was filleting a flathead he noticed something shiny.

Kristy was watching on and recognised it as her lost nose stud. The flathead must have swallowed the stud a few days earlier.

You’d be pretty pleased to find something that small after losing it in something as large as the ocean. Which makes me wonder why it’s so hard to find much larger items like lost keys when you misplace them somewhere in your house.

Just for the record, Pauline found my keys for me today after I left for work. Nothing quite as exciting as inside a fish but I’m glad that they’re safe.



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Meow

January 2, 2008
by Rodney Olsen
3 Comments

tunas_tins.jpgI mentioned a couple of weeks back in my post, I just want to be normal, that I visited the doctor for a check up.

Everything was pretty much normal apart from a very slightly elevated cholesterol level. The major part of reducing that level is down to some well needed weight loss but the doctor also suggested that I eat more fish.

He told me that I should eat tuna for lunch. Since then I’ve been buying those little single serve tins of tuna to eat at work. I split the tin between a couple of pieces of dry toast and lunch becomes a very easy and very tasty meal. I know that some people have a less than favourable relationship with tuna or in fact any kind of fish but I like the stuff.

A fellow worker was in the lunch room while I was preparing lunch today and told me that from where he was sitting it looked like cat food. I told him that it was. It’s cheaper and it keeps my coat shiny. Somehow I don’t think he believed me.



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