Katrina+and+Sarah's+ISP

Which breed of fish is the smartest?

My sister has a beta fish and wanted to teach it tricks, I told her that it was impossible. I did some research on the topic and found out that it is indeed completely possible to train a pet fish. On several websites there is information on techniques to train a fish, different breeds of fish, etc but I never found any information on which fish would be the best to train. For our experiment Katrina and I will train three of the smartest fish listed on some of the websites I have found. We will use a beta fish, a goldfish, and a bloodfin tetra. Our fish will be trained to swim through a small maze to determine which breed of fish is the smartest. All three fish are of average intelligence but are easy to train, and have a very well developed memory. They will be held in different tanks and only one fish will be allowed in the maze at one time to avoid violence. The experiment will test the intelligence of the fish by observing how long it takes it to navigate it's way through the maze. The walls of the maze will be constucted by lego blocks. Every week we will change the pattern of the maze by rearanging the blocks. We will record the data of the fish's time at the end of each week. At the end of the experiment the fish who gets through the maze with the lowest time each week will prove to be the smartest. Each fish is all approximately 2 inches in length but otherwise the size of the fish doesn't effect the tests. Every day the fish will be trained to follow a stick full of food through the maze. Eventually the fish should be able to find their way throught the maze themselves. The fish will be kept in three seperate containers, and they and the tests will be held and performed at either of our houses. The maze will be constructed of a plastic tub and plastic pieces for the walls to contain the water. I hope it will be a successful experiment.

Procedure:
 * 1) Get 1 Kerbensis fish, 1 Gold fish, and 1 Beta fish
 * 2) Each fish will be placed into the maze one at a time
 * 3) Each fish will go through the maze and their time will be recorded at the end of each week
 * 4) At the end of the week the lego blocks will be rearanged to make a different pattern
 * 5) The maze experiment will be recorded every week until the experiment time is over
 * 6) After the experiment the fish will be given to anyone who would like them and take care of them

Materials: Beta Fish, Gold Fish, Bloodfin tetra, FishPlastic Maze, , Three small bowls, Food Training stick

Hypothesis: In this experiment I think the Beta fish will show the most improvement, and have the best time at the end of the trials. I think the tetra will be the second best in both time and improvement, and the gold fish will be the worst. I expect the fish will start at a time of about a minuete in the beggining of the experiment. At the end I think the Fish will have showed a lot of improvement and there times will be about twenty seconds.

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- Katrina and SarahIs speed and smart the same? May want to see if speed and smarts are related. (Mr. Kerwin) Will the size(s) of the fish effect your experiment? (Courtney Stolba - 1/10/13)

You might want to put the fish through multiple times. Some fish might be faster than others, and if you put them through again, if they learned how the maze works, their time should be lower. (Lily Holmes, 1/9/13)

You may want to get multiple fish of each species to eliminate error in your tests. (Lena Sander 1-9-13)

You may want to know ahead of time which fish you think will be the fastest. (Lauren Jenkins 1-10-13)