Goldfish Only Have a Memory Span of 3 Seconds

This myth is very common and most people probably believe it since goldfish are such simple creatures compared to other creatures you might perceive as smart. In mythbusters season 1 episode 14 they conducted an experiment trying to disprove the myth that goldfish only have a memory of 3 seconds. Both created a course and attempted to train their goldfish over the course of a few weeks to go through a course within a time limit. Since the training took a long time and the goldfish were able to move through the course by memory it proved that the goldfish did not have a memory span of only 3 seconds. In an article on https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2019/10/27/how-long-is-a-goldfishs-memory/ a boy conducted an experiment over the course of a few weeks to see if the goldfish would learn to associate a red Lego with receiving food. The boy dropped a red Lego into the fishbowl every time he would feed the goldfish and eventually the goldfish would swim to the Lego because it understood that a red Lego meant food. The boy then stopped this process for a week and after a week he reintroduced the Lego and the goldfish swam back to the Lego when it was dropped into the water even though it had been a week since the boy had done this. Both of these experiments prove that goldfish have a memory longer than 3 seconds. I think there could be a bias with the experiment that the mythbusters did since they make a living off of proving myths wrong and might not get as good of reviews if their experiments don’t prove the myths wrong. However, since the boy had no reason to want the myth to be wrong and it supports the conclusion made by the mythbusters, I think the conclusion is correct in both experiments.