Fish communicate about everything from what area of the sea has the best food to where predators might be hiding.
Fish swim in a coral reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia in a handout photo. Fish, it turns out, are a chatty lot. They communicate about everything from what area of the sea has the best food to where predators might be hiding and, of course, their desire for for a mate.
Sarah Vela, senior data manager with a Dalhousie University marine environmental research group and lead developer of the portal, said FishSounds provides researchers with information about whether a fish species makes noise along with its geographical range. The portal includes data on about 1,200 fish species compiled from scientific literature and other sources. Of those, 1,061 were shown to make some type of detectable sound, a study published by the portal’s creators last month in Ecological Informatics said. The site so far holds recordings of more than 260 fish species.
“Fish have been singing a lot longer than birds have been singing,” Cox said. “And I just mean that from an evolutionary perspective.” Fish, he said, produce two kinds of sounds: active and passive. Active sounds are made intentionally using mouths or other body parts and can involve release of bubbles, manoeuvring different muscles to make a certain noise or moving bones around to get a repetitive click. Others make a sound like the beating of a drum with their swim bladders, he added.
Passive sounds are those made incidentally as they go about their day-to-day life, like chewing or digging.