Friday, July 26, 2019

Are fish deaf and dumb?

Are fish deaf and dumb?

Fish are anything but dumb. Squirrelfish communicate with clicking sounds, wrasse grunt, gurnards growl and male dumb fish have special muscles around their bladder which produce a drumming sound when contracted rapidly. Most remarkable of all, when herrings fart it has nothing to do with their digestion, but everything to do with communication. In order to have a conversation, they swallow air which they expel through the anal orifice in their gas bladder. In this way, the fish can produce notes extending over more than three octaves at frequencies of between 1.7 and 22 kHz. they can hold each note for almost eight seconds.
            since fish can make such a range of noises, it seems only logical to assume that they can hear. They do so through their inner ear which is connected to the air bladder by what is known as the Weberian apparatus then transmits the sounds to the inner ear - in a similar fashion to the way the auditory ossicles function in mammals. 
Wrasse native to the western Pacific Ocean communicates by making grunting noises.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why do dead fish float upside down?

Why do dead fish float upside down? Like a living creature, gases build up inside a fish's body when it dies, and this keeps it afloa...