If you think self-driving cars are scary and have a lot of kinks to work out, then this will freak you out: goldfish that can drive. A goldfish in a tiny robotic vehicle is proving that animals from different environments can still find their way around when you take them out of their comfortable habitats. A team of researchers in Israel (Ben-Gurion University) successfully taught a goldfish to navigate in a car on land.
… Researchers wanted to know if an animal’s innate navigational abilities only work in their home environments or whether these skills are universal. To test this, they attached a set of wheels under a small goldfish tank. Using a specialized camera system, they recorded and translated the fish’s movements into directions for the wheels — going forward and back and side to side.
… After a few days of learning the system, the fish could successfully move the car to the target they wanted to see up close. The fish even showed an ability to recover and get back on track after bumping into a wall or encountering fake targets on the walls.
… Back in 2019 researchers announced they had taught rats to drive.