The reaction of blinded goldfish to rotation in a centrifuge.

Blinded goldfish are known to respond to absolute rotation about the vertical axis by swimming so as to counteract the imposed rotation (Harden Jones, 1957). This reaction has also been found in blind cave fish, Anoptichthys jordam, and in normal goldfish in visual and absolute darkness (Howland, 1958). The experiments of Harden Jones in which the fish and the bowl containing the fish were rotated about an axis which was displaced laterally by several bowl radii gave rise to the same counter-rotational swimming behaviour as when the bowl was centred over the axis of rotation. The fish in this situation were evidently unaffected by the additional cyclic translational accelerations, and maintained their orientation as before. The relative sophistication of the inertial guidance system possessed by fish, which the foregoing experiments imply, can best be appreciated if we compare the performance of the fish with that of various known mechanisms for the detection of rotation. In Table 1 we have listed some common devices which detect rotation and their characteristics.