Talking with the Fishes
Most people know that certain animal species have ways to communicate through sound. Elephants, primates and birds all have auditory communication capabilities and now fish. A recent discovery in Japan has proven that a certain tropical reef fish can use auditory communication to “speak” to one another.
New research, reported Wednesday at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan sates that butterfly fish can communicate by making numerous sounds to “talk” to its mate. Butterfly fish have internal ears called swim bladders that can detect sound and lateral lines that sense movements in the water. Only butterfly fish have both organs connected. It has been speculated that they are capable of more sophisticated means of hearing.
An experiment was performed in the tropical waters of Hawaii by marine biologist Tim Tricas of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and his colleagues. They found three or four pairs of butterfly fish in feeding territories. In numerous experiments the researchers enclosed a pair of fish in a glass bottle and put the bottle in the middle of another pairs territory. They discovered that the owners of the territory would perform sound-generating behaviors such as erecting and flickering fins. The bottled fish would respond by grunting at the opposition. Interestingly only paired fish would communicate which would conclude that they are talking to one another. They also performed another experiment were they injected petroleum jelly into a fishes swim bladder. This caused interference in the sound traveling from the swim bladder to lateral lines. Fish that were injected swam closer together which would lead to believe that the butterfly fishes sense of “hearing” was disrupted.
The sense of hearing in butterfly fish my have developed because of their highly social nature. This would help in detecting food, predators and intruders. This new finding may lead to other social fish being experimented on to find whether or no they can communicate.
Posted by AZA (14)
posted by PWH @ 1:17 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
An interesting post. I don't think that people usually think of fish as being social animals, at least not beyond simple schooling for safety type sociality, and this post is a good example of how that assumption can be wrong. Just a minor point though, a fish's swim bladder is a gas filled sac that the fish uses to regulate its buoancy. Its certainly true that in addition to this function, some fish use their swim bladder to help detect sound (and some to make it), but I wouldn't call it the equivalent of an "ear". Some other fish make noise as well, that's actually where the Red drum gets its name. They make noises that sound like drumming. Good post.
Posted by RWS (14)
I found this post to be very interesting. I was never clear on the mechanisms that fish used to communicate with. I noticed that there were a couple proof reading mistakes. It's not a big deal obviously, I just thought you might want to fix the little things to make the post read a bit smoother. Other than that I thought that the post was pretty well written.
This was an interesting post. I think that these findings are very impressive that this breed of fish has this advanced of an audio communication system. These social animals may obviously have an edge over other modes of communication because this is one of the fastest modes of communication. Normally visual or chemical cues are the primary mode of communication. Their recognition system must also be very sensitive to outside stimuli. If there was any further information regarding any further advantages with their sound reception would be nice to share, otherwise good post.
Posted by BRW (14)
It is a rewarding previlege to have a swim bladder for the butterfly fish in terms of communicating better with others. I wonder if their hearing mechanism is equivalent to the one's of dolphins. As far as I know, dolphins use frequencies that reach far beyond our hearing capabilities.Do butterfly fish able to hear high pitched sounds(more like whistling) or a clicking? The whistles are the mean of communication and the clicks is for the sound navigation.
Good post
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