Goldfish don’t have a well‑defined “9‑second attention span,” and that popular figure is essentially a myth repeated in media, not something backed by real goldfish research.

Quick Scoop

  • The claim that a goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds comes from a widely repeated Microsoft/Time Magazine soundbite about human attention, not from actual goldfish experiments.
  • Careful fact‑checks and psychologists have pointed out that there is no solid scientific study supporting a precise 9‑second number for goldfish.
  • In practice, goldfish can learn , remember locations and routines, and be trained to perform tasks over minutes, days, and even months, which contradicts the idea that they “forget everything” in a few seconds.

So what is their attention span?

Scientists don’t usually talk about a single fixed “attention span” for goldfish the way headlines do. Instead they look at things like:

  1. How long a fish will focus on a stimulus (like food, light, or a moving object) before losing interest.
  2. How long it can retain a learned association (for example, coming to the surface when a certain sound plays).

In those kinds of learning and memory tasks, goldfish show consistent behavior over long periods, which means their attention and memory are far better than a few seconds.

Where did the myth come from?

  • Around 2015, articles citing an internal Microsoft marketing report claimed humans now have an average 8‑second attention span and compared that to a supposedly 9‑second attention span for goldfish.
  • The report did not provide real data or a clear source for the goldfish number, and later analyses called the whole comparison “the attention span myth.”

In other words, the famous line should really be:
“We don’t have a good scientific measure of a goldfish’s attention span, but we do know the 9‑second factoid isn’t based on solid evidence.”

TL;DR:
There is no reliable study proving that “the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.” Goldfish can pay attention, learn, and remember over far longer timescales, and the neat 9‑second figure is a catchy media myth, not a scientific fact.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.