Something fishy with the shampoo

Lisbeth Koelster, a television presenter on the Danish public channel DR1, was last May found guilty by a district court in Glostrup, west of Copenhagen, of violating animal protection laws. She had poured a "very diluted" amount of shampoo into a fish tank on a 2004 episode of the consumer affairs show she fronted to demonstrate the level of toxic material in a brand of anti-dandruff shampoo. After three days, all but one of the fish were dead.
The lower court judge had ruled that Miss Koelster "deliberately committed an act of cruelty to animals" and violated animal protection laws, but decided not to hand down any sentence since an unreasonable amount of time, "four-and-a-half years," had passed between the date the complaint was filed and the trial.
The appeals court judges ruled on Friday, however, that Miss Koelster's test did not violate European laws on experimenting on animals.
They also said it had "not been sufficiently proven that Ms. Koelster had caused the fish anguish and suffering," as claimed by the plaintiff, a veterinary practitioner who saw Koelster's show.
Following the proceedings, Koelster said she was "thrilled at this very unambiguous verdict" which "exonerates me of all the charges."
"This is a great victory for the freedom of journalistic work. I was not an executioner of these fish and I have not violated animal protection laws, as this ruling confirms," she told reporters.

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Smarty fish

Fish can remember things for months, according to researchers, who have dismissed the myth that the animals have a three-second memory. The view that fish lack the brain power to retain memories is "absolute rubbish," said Dr Kevin Warburton of Charles Sturt University's Institute for Land, Water and Society in Australia.
He made his conclusions after studying the behavior of Australian freshwater fish such as the silver perch, which can remember a predator for several months after only one encounter. "They can learn to avoid predators after being attacked once and they retain this memory for several months," he added.