在以色列的Negev（BGU）本古吉翁大学的那些狂野和疯狂的家伙教授金鱼来开车。现在，当您认为GBU房屋在其他部门，Albert Katz国际沙漠研究中时，您可能会试图检查日历。但不，我们无处可去1^st四月。而BGU是一个备受推崇的，非常高兴的大学。那么这个故事是什么？

In motorcycling circles, it is not unusual to see references to ‘squids’. The Urban Dictionary defines a motorcycle squid as “someone who over-estimates his [sic] abilities while riding a bike, and is over-confident of his [sic] abilities despite lacking any relevant skills”. The derivation of the term is fairly gruesome and not for a family publication like this. Ocean-going calamari-type squid are highly intelligent (and equally tasty), so that’s definitely not where the word comes from.

Goldfish, on the other hand, are rarely listed among the aquatic kingdom’s MENSA candidates. The myth that their attention span only covered nine seconds (allegedly one second longer than human beings’) has been debunked; it appears that they can actually remember things for a couple of months. In that, I suspect they offer a considerable improvement on human beings – or at least on some of the drivers I encounter on our everyday roads.

Demonstrating the mental capacity of our finny friends, BGU researchers have successfully trained several goldfish to operate a robotic vehicle in an effort to explore whether their species is capable of navigating on land. Before we go any further, let me record that I welcome our new aquatic-robotic overlords …but it hasn’t gone quite that far yet.

The BGU team set out to explore whether animals’ innate navigational abilities are universal or restricted to their natural environments, according to a paper published in the Behavioural Brain Research journal, a highly respected publication. Seriously, folks, this is, er, serious. “It goes without saying that fish, in general, are not naturally equipped to explore terrestrial environments,” the researchers note.

“这项研究暗示navigational ability is universal rather than specific to the environment,” said Shachar Givon, a Ph.D. student and one of the paper’s authors. “Second, it shows that goldfish have the cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely 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.”

我会倾向于与第一个结论争论，如果你在高速公路的四个车道上看到了汽车转弯，那么你就会看到一条跑道。不过，不是第二个结论。事实上，学习驾驶汽车是如此挑战，即甚至基础所谓的“司机”即使是基础所谓的硕士。也许驾驶教练可以从BGU科学家学习？让我们来看看他们的方法。

研究人员创造了一个“鱼机车辆”（FOV），在一组小金鱼罐下使用复杂的相机系统来记录和将鱼类的运动转化为导航方向。FOV根据鱼缸的运动特性，位置和方向来改变其位置。这可以为人类工作。想象一下，如果达到MACCAS奶昔，而驾驶导致制动器被应用。

To get the goldfish to “drive” the FOV toward a target — a colorful mark on the wall of the experiment room which they could see through the clear sides of the tank, the researchers rewarded the fish which drove toward the target with a food pellet. Once again, this could translate to drivers. You could give them a hamburger if they stayed in a single lane on the road for a certain distance.

“After a few days of training, the fish were able to navigate to the target, even if they hit a wall along the way or started their drive from a new location,” wrote the scientists. Notably, they weren’t fooled by decoy targets set out by the researchers. This might be asking for a bit too much from human beings; in my experience some of them don’t learn to drive over an entire lifetime, which is somewhat longer than that of a goldfish … in some cases, anyway.

But the very fact that goldfish can be taught to drive is a subject for optimism. Now all we need is for scientists to teach squid how to ride motorcycles.

(All photos sourced through unsplash.com)