The Surprising Noisemaking Abilities of Tiny Fish

One of the world’s smallest fish, measuring just 12 millimeters long, it can make a sound as loud as a firecracker at more than 140 decibels.

Danionella cerebrum It is a small fish that lives in small rivers along the Bago Yoma Mountains in Myanmar.it is smallest known brain of all vertebrates in the world.

“We study this fish primarily for neuroscience because it’s so small and transparent,” he says. verity cook Charité, Faculty of Medicine, University of Berlin, Germany. But the fish are so loud, she says, that she can hear the pulsating sound just by walking in front of the tank.

To investigate how these tiny fish make this sound, Cook and his colleagues gathered groups of three or four fish into small tanks and shot high-speed video.

When a fish makes a sound, the ribs next to the swim bladder (organs that control the buoyancy of the swim bladder) are pulled by special muscles into a small hollowed cartilage area.

“There’s a lot of tension in this contraction,” Cook said. “When it is released rapidly, [the rib] When you hit the swim bladder, it makes a drum sound. “

Based on gene expression analysis, these specialized muscles are more resistant to fatigue than other muscles in the fish, and are therefore able to produce more hits in a row.

It’s unclear why these fish make so much noise. D. cerebrum They typically live in murky, murky waters and may have evolved this behavior to help find each other when visibility is poor, Dr Cook said.

“But the fact that only males make sounds suggests that it is related to aggressive behavior towards other males and mating behavior with females,” she says.