Just like humans, fish can also communicate with one another. The most common ways they achieve this are through sound, color, bioluminescence, motion, electrical impulses and smell. These forms of communication are usually used to help navigate, call for spawning, alert predators to keep away, and while fighting. Today, we will learn specifically about how fish communicate using sound.
Listen carefully as fishes have been talking for the last 155 million years
The study suggests that sound communication in fish goes back at least 155 million years. Although fish have developed hearing similar to other vertebrates, the way they make sounds to communicate to other fish is distinctive. Many fish use swim bladder vibrations to make noise or may vibrate other muscles or parts of the body, while others can snap their tendons, move their jaws, or otherwise rub skeletal parts to produce sounds.
Why do they communicate with each other?
The sounds are created for various reasons. For example, a catfish may make noise to scare off predators. Drum fish and toadfish are both considered particularly noisy fish. The main objective behind this communication or interaction is to call their partners for mating, warning their predators, and call for help during the fight.
Thus, communication is key to survival and is observed quite effectively in underwater creatures as well.
How Do Fish Communicate Through Sound?
Different kinds of sounds can be heard from a fish tank if we notice carefully. These sounds are similar to our communication through words. The commonly heard sounds are of three major categories.
– Popping sound or pops
– Crocks (such as generally produced by frogs)
– Purring sound (made commonly by cats)
These sounds are produced by the organ of buoyancy called the Swim bladder. Alternating contraction and relaxation of the swim bladder are responsible for the production of sounds of different frequencies via vibration.
Sound transmission through water is by far the best way to communicate among fishes. There are two reasons why sound is a preferable mode of communication:
– Sound can travel much farther than light in an underwater environment.
– Much of the light and other signals are lost inside water but sound ways are greatly intact.
Thus, sound is one excellent way of communication that helps in inviting the gender for mating, fighting, and looking for prey as well. Importantly these sounds are mostly inaudible to us, and we can’t quite understand them.
Examples:
– Damselfish uses sounds waves to protect itself, its habitat, and other members of species from other predators.
– Toadfish and their species use sounds as calls for attracting the opposite sex for mating and courtship.
Why Do Fish Need to Communicate?
While discussing the modes of communication in detail the question arises why fish need to communicate and what purposes are fulfilled.
Like any other creature living on land fishes also need to convey important messages, call their partners, move around to different habitats in various climates. Thus, communication is the key to survival in the underwater world.
– Hunting
– Protection from predators
– Navigation
– Searching for food
– Calling for courtship
– Mating and Spawning
– Fighting against dominating species
Thus, the above-mentioned goals require effective communication.
Do Fish Talk to Humans?
Fish communicate to their owners, they recognize them and remember them for a longer duration of time. The mode of communication is not the same as we speak through words.
They do respond to our gestures, when we add food to the aquarium the way they move to the surface with excitement is their way to communicate with us and express their feelings.
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Video source: WATOP
