First it turns out they can drive. Sort of. Now it turns out that fish can talk. We have come a long way since assuming that our finny friends don’t feel pain so it’s okay to – never mind.
Truth is, it’s been suspected for thousands of years that fish can make sounds. No less an authority than the proto-ichthyologist-cum-philosopher Aristotle wrote about it in his book “Historia Animalium” (“History of the Animals”). He also wrote that fish have no sensory organs other than eyes e.g., they have no ears. But in a lengthy discourse in Part Eight of that book, he explained why it is patently clear that even so, fish hear perfectly well.
Aristotle even detailed which fish hear better than others (in his opinion) – the mullet and bass, for example, while deep-sea fish did not hear well.
In 1938, zoologist Karl von Frisch commented in a paper that clearly, many species of fish generate sound. He even postulated that they do have language.
But from our lofty perch at the apex of evolution, people at large tend not to ascribe much or any import to fish vocal emissions. It was also assumed that fish vocalizations were rare: a 2018 paper estimated that about 20 percent of fish “actively make noises to communicate.”
Now, new research at Cornell University finds that communication is actually common among ray-finned fish (which are the type of fish they studied; they also constitute 99 percent of all known fish). Also, inter-fish communication must be important to them, because it evolved independently approximately 33 times in the course of fish evolution, write Aaron N. Rice and colleagues in the prestigious journal of Ichthyology and Herpetology.
One of these soniferous fish families evolved around 155 million years ago, indicating that fish have been talking at least since then, the team writes.
All in all, the team found that two-thirds of the ray-finned fish can (and probably do) communicate with sound. This alone is an indicator of how ancient this ability is, and how important. Convergent evolution of fish-speak didn’t happen 33 times, and possibly more, in order to make small talk about the weather.
What does the fish say
What the fish are saying, we do not know. It was quite the surprise, for instance, to learn that fruit bats also talk a great deal, if only to complain about the bitterness of their lot. It was also a surprise – at least to people who do not have them – to learn that cats can talk and have a vast range of vocalizations.
Clearly, vocalization is a thing in the vertebrate world. And while it has been long suspected to be a thing in fish, now there’s proof. Here is the vocalization of a midshipman fish, who we can assume is not emulating Alice’s cake and saying “Eat Me”.
The midshipman speaking its mind
“Sound communication is often overlooked within fishes, yet they make up more than half of all living vertebrate species,” said Andrew Bass, co-lead author and a professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences. “They’ve probably been overlooked because fishes are not easily heard or seen, and the science of underwater acoustic communication has primarily focused on whales and dolphins. But fishes have voices, too!”
In fact, sound travels faster and better underwater than in air – as Aristotle also noted. Possibly one reason our recognition of fish talk has tarried is that the sound doesn’t carry well from water to air. Floating above in our boats, we hardly hear it, while the sound of our oars – let alone our engines – can drive fish batty.
Say it with your swim bladder
Lacking vocal cords and other biological paraphernalia we associate with speech, how exactly do fish generate sounds?
Most vocalizing fish families possess muscles that cause their swim bladders to vibrate. Some others produce stridulation by rubbing bones against each other. Some can do both.
Here is the voice of a toadfish that we would have regrettably missed. He or she is speaking by means of contracting and releasing “drumming muscles” attached to the swim bladder. The whiskered catfish communicate by a similar mechanism. Think about that; maybe the statement “Oh lord that’s ugly” goes in both directions.
An oyster toadfish. It may not like how you look either
How surprising is all this? Not very if you’re up on especially observant ancient Greek philosophers, or modern research into hitherto unsuspected abilities in the animal set.For instance, if once we arrogantly assumed that only we – epitomes of evolution that we are – can recognize faces, we have been proven wrong. Not only can Fido suss if it’s you, so can bees.
The primitive parts of our brains are more involved in our so-called “higher” abilities than we thought. Ten to one, fish can recognize you too – archer fish have been shown by Israeli scientists to be able to track gaze.
Other scientists, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, previously showed that archer fish perform visual searching for prey much the way you do, concluding that our assumptions about the primitive functioning of their primitive brains were silly.
All this may shed light on how other scientists at the Be’er Sheva university taught goldfish to drive motorized fishtanks in an experiment that saw one small step for goldfish, one giant step for all fish-kind, as Haaretz’s Gid’on Lev put it.
So, back to fish talk. The team explains that for the purposes of their study, “soniferous behavior” is associated with a communication function within or between species – note, dear reader, that perhaps fish aren’t speciesist – and not a by-product of feeding or locomotion. Like the sound of us kicking water when swimming isn’t communication, but the sound of us screaming “shark!” is.
Plausibly, fish also have a way to “verbally” inform each other, and even other species, that a shark or some other objectionable being is approaching their reef.
Cichlids, a fish popular on Israeli tables, are also talkers. So are cod, damselfish, squirrelfish and so many more. Here is a longspine squirrelfish having a chat.
A longspine squirrelfish shares a piece of its mind.
So, do all fish talk? Maybe. Maybe some communicate in fashions we have yet to understand. All in all, the team proposes the existence of vocal ability in 175 of 470 recognized fish families.
All this means that vocalization is strongly selected for in evolution. Being able to scream “The kraken no longer sleepeth” and being able to hear that shriek smacks of better adaptation than not having that ability.
Kraken, there are none, but giant squids and other tentacular denizens of the sea, there are. One suddenly wonders if the octopus – considered by many as being really smart and wily – not only torment fish when they’re bored but can produce sounds that fool fish. That remains to be seen.
It may also be speculated that some fish species once had the ancestral ability to vocalize, and secondarily lost that ability, the Cornell team observes. The team notes that some Gadiformes vocalize using swim bladder speak, but some have reduced swim bladder musculature.
Here is the sound of a banded drumfish that did not lose the ability.
Bladder speak in a banded drumfish
What is the bottom line? Aristotle said it best 2,500 years ago.
“And, at times, when they want the fish to crowd together, they adopt the stratagem of the dolphin-hunter; in other words they clatter stones together, that the fish may, in their fright, gather close into one spot, and so they envelop them within their nets.”
The argument over whether or not fish feel pain rages on. But even back then, they could feel that terror.
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