Fish turn out to be huge ‘talkers’

You thought some people were talking to you? Fish can enjoy it too.

There is quite a bit of chatter under the waves. Researchers come to this remarkable conclusion in a new study, published in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology. Some fish were known to make noises. But now it turns out that most of them are really huge “talkers.”

Sounds

It is nothing new that some fish occasionally produce some sounds. “We’ve known that for a long time,” said researcher Aaron Rice. “However, the noise these fish make has always been seen as rare oddities. And so we decided to study whether these are indeed one-offs, or whether fish talk to each other much more often.”

Study

In the study, the researchers studied ray fins; a sizable and diverse class of vertebrate fish that make up some 99 percent of the world’s known fish species. They then looked at existing recordings of fish sounds and scientific papers describing these phenomena. They also studied the anatomy of a fish; are they equipped with organs at all that allow the production of sound? “Thanks to decades of fundamental research into the evolutionary relationships of fish, we can now properly examine how different functions and behaviors have evolved in the approximately 35,000 known fish species,” said study researcher William Bemis.

Communication

It leads to a surprising discovery. Because the team came across no fewer than 175 families – two-thirds of the fish species – that communicate through sound. And that is not something of today. By examining the family tree of fish, the researchers found that communication has played an important role for millions of years. Some fish have even been ‘talking’ for at least 155 million years!

So it seems like fish are talking to you. A surprising new insight. “Communication through sound is often overlooked in fish,” said researcher Andrew Bass. “That’s probably because fish aren’t easy to hear or see. In addition, scientific research on underwater acoustic communication has mainly focused on whales and dolphins. But fish also have voices.”

Topics of Conversation

What are fish talking about? Pretty much the same things we do: sex and food. According to Rice, fish use sound to try to attract a mate, defend a food source or territory, or let them know where they are with sounds produced.

The researchers plan to continue studying the sounds fish make. “Our study shows that so many more animals communicate than previously thought,” Rice said. “More than we ever thought possible. In addition, fish can really do anything. They breathe air, they can fly, they eat anything and everything and they make noise. At this point, nothing can surprise me anymore.”