Produced by: Popular Science China
Produced by: From Water to Land Team
Supervised by: Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Son: "Can fish sing?"
Dad: "Of course! Whales can sing, and their songs are melodious and melodious. ! "
son: "Isn't a whale a fish? "
father: "Oh, there are also dolls. Fish , the giant fish can sing! "
son: "Is the giant fish a fish? "
dad: "Oh, I know there is a fish that can sing. "
son: "What kind of fish is that? : " mermaid !"
son: "..."
In fact, whenever I ask friends around me "Can fish squawk?", many people answer: "Never heard of it!", but there are also friends. He said he heard carp calling when he was a kid. Unfortunately, I can't say for sure whether carp can sing, but scientific research has found that some fish can indeed sing.
The plainfin midshipman with disturbing singing
First, let’s take a look at the first singing fish - the plainfin midshipman.
△Figure 1. Plainfin American ToadfishPlainfin Midshipman (from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org)
This fish is well known to people near the coastline of northern California, USA. During the breeding season, the male fish will come to the cracks of some rocks on the shore. On high tide nights, they can make a low sound for more than an hour. People who live by the sea often complain about this sound, because it sounds like a high-speed motorcycle coming from the bottom of the sea, and sometimes even the house shakes.
Scientists have conducted in-depth research on this and found that this continuous buzzing sound is the music "sung" by the flat-fin American toadfish during courtship [1].
The flat-fin American toadfish is a type of toadfish that inhabits the eastern Pacific Ocean. They bury themselves in the sand and sleep during the day, and only come out at night to feed and mate. The flatfin American toadfish sings using its swim bladder . When it contracts muscles on the sides of the swim bladder, the muscles cause the walls of the swim bladder to vibrate, which in turn vibrates the surrounding water, making it sound like a motorcycle running underwater.
It is undeniable that the cry of the flat-fin American toadfish has caused a lot of trouble to local residents, but this little elf has played important scientific research value in the hands of scientists.
Andrew Bass, a professor of neuroscience and behavior at Cornell University in the United States, has conducted ten years of research on the vocalization and auditory neural mechanisms of toadfish. In the past, biologists believed that the toadfish acquired the ability to make sounds and hear from other ancient animals during evolution, but no evidence has been found. Andrew Bass and others used confocal laser microscopy to find auditory neurons that can determine pitch and audio frequency. These auditory neurons are located in the back half of the fish's brain, between the terminal nerves in the brain and the spinal nerves. This is the same position as the auditory neurons of birds, amphibians and mammals, thus confirming that the auditory neurons of humans and other animals are likely to come from ancient fish 400 million years ago [2].
△Figure 2. The evolutionary relationship between the singing mode and vocal organs of vertebrates (quoted from reference 2)
Through further research, they also found that the way in which neurons in the auditory system are connected to each other is the same in all vertebrates. The external manifestations are just different. Humans and other mammals mostly use the cochlea in the inner ear to hear sounds, while toadfish use the saccule. Before the toadfish is ready to make a sound, the brain sends a signal to the ears to reduce the sensitivity of the ears. Once the sound nerve impulse is completed, the brain will send fewer signals to reduce the sensitivity of the ear, so that the ear can focus more on listening to outside sounds without being disturbed by your own voice. By studying the auditory nervous system of toadfish, we can gain a further understanding of the mechanism of human deafness.
How about the African cichlids that sing "love songs" during courtship fish
Have you ever been impressed by the magical flat-finned American toadfish? It’s not over yet, let’s learn about another kind of singing fish - African cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni)
△Figure 3. African cichlid fish will use singing to court mates (quoted from reference 3)
here I chose to introduce cichlid fish because they are so famous! In particular, the cichlid fish of Lake Malawi evolved from a single ancestor trapped in Lake Malawi in less than 1 million years (equivalent to the blink of an eye in geological time). Kung Fu), and has evolved into at least 850 varieties. In order to compete for food and space, each cichlid fish has developed its own special habits. These cichlid fish constitute an important biological system in Lake Malawi. The colorful cichlid fish of Lake Malawi are a classic example of explosive evolution, and their importance to evolutionary research is self-evident.
However, people seem to pay more attention to the varied visual information of these cichlid fishes, ignoring the potential role of vocal communication in mate selection of cichlid fishes. This may be related to the characteristics of cichlid fish calls. Compared to the flat-fin American toadfish, which is notorious for repeatedly complaining to local residents about its loud calls, the calls of cichlid fish appear to be very low-key.
Research has found that male African cichlid fish will vibrate their bodies and flick their tails to attract female fish during courtship, and they will also make sounds when doing courtship movements [3]. The average duration of this call is 239.5 milliseconds, consisting of an average of 8.5 short pulses with a duration of 10-20 milliseconds. The frequency range of the call is 50-1500 Hz, with an average of 499.1 Hz [3].
△Figure 4. The male African cichlid fish vibrates his body and makes a mating call towards the female fish. The picture A above shows a male African cichlid fish flicking its tail towards two female fish (H is an underwater microphone, used to record the sound of the male fish); the picture B below shows the waveform of the call of the African cichlid fish. and spectrogram (quoted from reference 3)
What is interesting is that when male fish sing, they will definitely vibrate their bodies and flick their tails, but they will not necessarily vibrate their bodies and flick their tails. tweet.
So, are the calls of male fish attractive to female fish? The researchers separately classified white noise into (white noise is a random sound signal with a constant power spectral density. The power of this signal in each frequency band is the same, similar to the visual signal that is mixed with monochromatic light of various wavelengths. To give a more popular example, the sound emitted by the TV when it was off or had no signal was often used for comparison in sound playback experiments) and the sound of male fish. The fish listens and then lets it choose. As a result, more female frogs swam to the side where the male fish's calls were played, indicating that the male fish's calls indeed have a mating function [3].
△Figure 5. Schematic diagram of the device (A) and results (B) of the African cichlid fish female phonotaxis experiment (quoted from reference 3)
Another characteristic of African cichlid fish is that the female will hold the eggs in her mouth. After hatching, the young fish will also hide in the female's mouth when in danger. Research has found that female African cichlids in the pregnancy period have very good hearing, while the hearing loss of female fish in the hatching stage is very obvious (they are devoted to raising their children, and they are deaf to the "love song" of the male fish at this time), indicating that Female fish will adjust their hearing sensitivity according to their physiological state [3].
Figure 6. Hearing thresholds of female African cichlid fish in different physiological states. The black line refers to the hatching period and the red line refers to the pregnancy period. The lower the hearing threshold, the more sensitive the hearing (quoted from reference 3)
has both good singing and good looks. Painted Goby
Finally, let’s take a look at a fish with a great singing voice and good looks - the Painted Goby ( Pomatoschistus pictus).
△Figure 7. Painted goby, as its name suggests, the fish is as beautiful as painted (Erling Photo by Svensen)
Research has found that painted gobies have very complex visual courtship signals, which are divided into visual displays outside the nest and inside the nest. The former includes approaching the female, vibrating, leading the female to the nest, and gently pushing the female. flanks and fast "8"-shaped swimming stunts, etc. The latter includes rapid movements, body tremors, etc.[4]
However, male fish will only emit a mating call after discovering a female fish. The call is composed of two syllables. Visual signals and acoustic signals are sometimes emitted simultaneously [4].
△Figure 8. The waveform diagram (top) and spectrogram (bottom) of the call of the painted goby, where A and B respectively represent two different syllables, and the spectral structures of the two syllables are completely different (quoted from reference 4)
uses sound and In the video playback experiment, the researchers found that when choosing a mate, female painted gobies prefer multi-modal signals that combine vision and sound compared to single modal signals (only sound or vision). When only single-modal signals exist, female fish usually rely more on sound signals [4].
However, when there is noise interference in the environment, it is a different matter. At this time, female fish will pay more attention to the visual signals of male fish during courtship. After all, the visual signals do not need to worry about being obscured by noise [5].
△Figure 9. Schematic diagram of the goby sound and visual playback experimental device (quoted from reference 4)
In fact, as early as 1970, Fish and Mowbray revealed very Vocalization is a common phenomenon in fish, especially among teleost fishes [1, 6]. Not only male fish can sing, but some female fish can also sing [7]. Now more and more studies have proven that vocal communication plays a very important role in fish courtship, territorial defense and other behaviors.
△ Figure 10. Waveforms of the calls of several bony fishes, with arrows pointing to the enlarged details of the selected part (quoted from reference 1)
Seeing this, everyone understands that fish singing is not an isolated case. Some domestic fish are very May also chirp. As for which fish in China can bark? Is carp singing reliable? Let zoologists and curious you explore these questions!
(circle card has been added here, please go to Toutiao client to view)
Reference:
[1] Bass AH, Chagnaud BP, Feng NY. Comparative Neurobiology of Sound Production in Fishes. Animal Signals Communication, 2015, 4:35-75.
[2] Bass AH, Gilland EH, Baker R. Evolutionary Origins for Social Vocalization in a Vertebrate Hindbrain-Spinal Compartment. Science, 2008, 321(5887):417-421.
[3] Maruska KP, Ung US, Fernald RD. The African cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni uses acoustic communication for reproduction: sound production, hearing, and behavioral significance. Plos One, 2012, 7(5): e37612.
[4] Amorim MC, Da PA, Caiano M, et al. Mate preference in the painted goby: the influence of visual and acoustic courtship signals. Journal of Experimental Biology, 2013, 216( 21):3996-4004.
[5] De Jong K, Amorim MCP, Fonseca PJ, et al. Noise Affects Multimodal Communication During Courtship in a Marine Fish. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2018, 6.
[6] Fish MP, Mowbray WH. Sounds of western north atlantic fishes. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1970.
[ 7] Ladich F, Maiditsch IP. Acoustic signaling in female fish: factors influencing sound characteristics in croaking gouramis. Bioacoustics, 2017, 1-14.
