Goldie And Tony

[sic0198]

I have 2 weather loaches. I've had 'em for about 5 months, I call one Tony (he's a regular one) and the other one is Goldie (he's a golden weather loach). I like them very much, their active and hardy. Anyway, I think it's funny, I catch 'em laying together in some weeds, and I tap the glass and scare 'em out. They swim around for a few then come back to the same place, like they're tempting me to do it again. Today I noticed something. I saw 'em in the grass again so I eased over to 'em-but they recognized me and scramed before I could get to 'em. These loaches must be pretty smart. I saw something on mythbusters about goldfish only having a 3 second memory, I didn't see the verdict of the test but I would imagine goldfish have a brain like a weather loach and I proved 'em wrong. Weather Loaches have to have a good memory to recognize me.

After I noticed this I stopped aggrevating 'em.

Oh I'll tell you why I named it Tony. Weather Loaches are supposed to do some weird behavorial things before it rains. They supposedly sense the drop in barometric pressure and wiggle-jiggle around. Anyway it never did that so I decided to call it Tony, after our local weatherman. I remember one day he (weatherman) said it was gonna snow 2 inches and I woke up with 2 feet of it. So Tony seemed sn adequate name for my lying weather loach.

 

[karuna]

hehe, I had a loach (pet store had it labeled as a Japanese or Chinese Loach I think) in I think my second tank I ever owned when I was about 14. Awesome to watch, used to come up to the surface and tickle my fingers when I put them in. Pretty sure he was trying to see if he could eat them but it was kinda querky and cool. He's still going strong almost 10 years later now and has been re-housed in a lovely tank in my brother's kitchen.

I wouldn't get into the habit of tapping on the tank though as I'm pretty sure this would be similar to someone walking up to you and shaking you everytime they saw you to say hello. It would certainly annoy me after a while.

In terms of the 3 second myth, I think you're probably right to say it is a myth, I always doubted this from experience when I was younger. A friend and I when we were teenagers used to go fishing in a sea quarry together on an Island on the west coast of Scotland. We would go out in the morning and collect some shell fish (mostly limpets) in a bucket and then de-shell them. Once we had done this we would head over to the quarry about the same time each day and start throwing in handfuls near where our favourite fishing spot was. Even if we hadn't done this in six months or whatever, after a few days the fish would be around about that area waiting for the limpets.

Not entirely sure whether that is proof that they remembered there would be food there at that specific time of day or if they decided to relocate to that area cause of the increase in food supplies in that particular place of the quarry though, but it was always reason for me to doubt that myth of a short memory. I think there also have been tests in labs about their memories using various experiments concerning feeding. Maybe someone else has more proof of this.

Good luck with the loaches.

EDIT: Just thought of something else or another way of putting it perhaps. The philosophical issue would be; is it really a case of conscious memory or just an association of ideas? That is to say, do the fish recall memories of you tapping the tank until they move or have they just associated the ideas of the perception of you approaching the tank with stress/pain and subconciously have adopted a behaviour to avoid the stress?

 

[sharkbaitwoohaha]

i have two loaches too. they are the best. i love to hand feed them with bloodworm and they come and curl up inside my hand and eat. they are cute