The author studied the visual acuity of loath,
Misgurnus anguillicaudatus by means of training for striped patterns. All the experiments were performed in a dark room, under uniformly diffused illumination of 160 lux. The fish (body length 4-5 cm) was separately introduced into a glass dish of 15 cm diameter, containing water 4 cm in depth.One half of the dish was underlaid by a grey paper of series Nr. 1 (white) Nr.10 (black), while another half by a paper, on which stripes,
i. e. white and black lines (both 3, 1, 0.5, 0.3, or 0.2 mm wide) ran perpendicularly to the grey-pattern boundary. The fish was supplied with food (
Chironomus larvae), whenever it appeared on the pattern side. Everyday the fish was tested before beginning of training,
i. e. we measured how long it stayed on the pattern side within a given period and thus calculated its rate of response. As the fish swum always immediately on the bottom, the rate of response would reasonably denote ability of fish to discriminate two line a given interval.
1. According to our previous study, the loach shows often negative phototaxis, so that it must be tested at first, whether training is prevented by the tendency to prefer darkness to brightness. In fact, the fish is able to be trained for white (Nr.1) against black (Nr.10) and
vice versa, with equally good success.
2. The fish is easily trained for stripes 3 and 1 mm wide. The rate of response is always over 75% after 4-7 days. The loach can clearly distinguish 3 or 1 mm-striped pattern from every grade of grey series.
3. As for 0.2 mm-striped pattern, the rate of response is about 50 %. Though the fish can be trained with success to distinguish this pattern from a certain grey, it responds no longer to the pattern if the grey is exchanged for the darker (or lighter) one. Thus it is obvious that the loach looks 0.2 mm-striped pattern as an uniform grey.
4. It is not always clear whether the fish is able to discriminate 0.5 and 0.3 mm-striped pattern from grey series. Therefore, the limit of visual acuity (minimum separable) of loach is considered to be about 0.3-0.5 mm under conditions of our experiments.
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