Fooling Fish...Like Dogs!

Travel Rod Winner.

- Ian Welch

Q CAN you explain to me how conditioned reflexes work? Am I right in thinking that fish can only problem solve at a basic level? Ron Brooke, Milford on Sea, Hampshire.

A Dr Ian Welch says....

A conditioned response is, at its most simple, an automatic response to a stimulus. In terms of scientific background, the most famous of all conditioned reflex experiments was the one carried out by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

Pavlov used dogs for his experiment, and determined that a response to a new stimulus could be learned by ringing a bell whenever he fed the dogs. Dogs produce saliva naturally when they are given food, and Pavlov demonstrated that, after a period of conditioning, the dogs would salivate when he rang the bell, irrespective of whether food was given or not.

So, what on earth do fish have in common with Pavlov’s dogs?