You’d expect to see this in a cartoon or maybe an old American Dad episode (yep, Season 9, Klaus the goldfish actually gets a robotic body).
But in real life?
Israeli scientists have actually taught goldfish to drive a car.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
They built a “fish-operated vehicle” and spent weeks helping their aquatic students learn to navigate on land.
And not just any goldfish—Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, named after the gentlemen from Pride and Prejudice, were apparently the top drivers in this bizarre brainy experiment.
It sounds like a joke: “Two fish are in a tank. One says, ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’”
But researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev weren’t joking. They were testing what’s known as domain transfer methodology—the idea that a species can perform familiar tasks (like navigation) in unfamiliar environments.
In this case: could a fish, who’s never even seen land, learn to move purposefully across it?
So how did they do it?
They designed a rolling fish tank, controlled not by buttons or levers, but by the direction in which the fish swam. A top-down camera would track the fish’s movement. Swim forward, and the tank moved forward. Turn right, and the tank turned.
The tank (aka “FOV” or Fish Operated Vehicle) had a target: a pink board at the end of a room.
Touch the board?
You get a tasty fish treat.
Within days, the goldfish figured it out. They didn’t just hit the target once—they did it repeatedly, even from different starting points and with distractions in the room.
According to Prof. Ronen Segev, this shows that navigation skills are universal and not just dependent on environment.
Let’s pause: a 4.2-ounce goldfish, floating inside a tank on wheels, is making real-time driving decisions using vision, direction, and memory. And humans still struggle with roundabouts.
“We wanted to challenge ourselves—and our fish,” said Shachar Givon, lead author of the study published in Behavioral Brain Research.
“Lucky for us, it was not so impossible after all.”
So why does this matter?
Fish are known to navigate well underwater. But what happens when you lift them out of their natural world and ask them to perform a task on dry land—without changing their mode of control (swimming)?
If they succeed, it would suggest something powerful: that navigation is not just environmental or instinctual, but deeply cognitive.
Aside from potentially shattering the myth that goldfish have a three-second memory, it forces us to rethink how intelligent and adaptable non-human creatures can be.
If a goldfish can process spatial cues, navigate unfamiliar terrain, and make decisions, what else might they be capable of?
One day it’s fish driving on land. Tomorrow? Pigeons piloting drones.
Until then, if a goldfish can hit their destination without GPS, what’s your excuse for missing that left turn?
Well, I write daily (mostly the weird stuff I find interesting). If you like this whole no nonsense approach, feel free to bookmark and come back tomorrow or continue reading other stories to make up your mind.
See ya, internet friend.
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