ToadfishSLIKE BARON, FLICKR
Fish talk
The hoots and grunts of the spiny toadfish may communicate complex information, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It is the first time complex harmonics, called nonlinearities, have been observed in fish, though fish do make a wide variety of sounds. Bottom-feeding toadfish produce sounds by vibrating the muscles of their swim bladders, air-filled sacs that control their buoyancy, reports Wired. Researchers at Cornell University analyzed spectrograms of the toadfish's hoots to show that the fish generate complex, nonlinear calls like those produced by frogs, birds, and primates. Experimental silencing of the fish swim bladders demonstrated that the complex signals vanish when one of the bladders is paralyzed.
World's largest whale shark gathering
In August 2009, ...
