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Singing and Dancing Fish: Females Pay More Attention to Males’ Dance Moves When It Is Noisy

- Karen de Jong, Maria Clara P. Amorim, Paulo J. Fonseca, & Katja U. Heubel

Just because they cannot speak like humans do, does not mean that fish cannot communicate using sound. Most fish listen to their environment and many fish produce sounds for communication. Fish can use sound to communicate with shoal members, to tell rivals how strong they are, and to tell potential mates that they want to mate.
Unfortunately, a lot of the noise humans make underwater has frequencies similar to the fish songs. To understand how noise affects fish, we studied a sound-producing fish, the painted goby (Pomatoschistus pictus). Painted goby males sing and dance to attract females to their nests, but females usually pay more attention to the males' song than to the males' dance moves when they are choosing a mate. For females, it is especially important to choose a healthy and strong male. Those males will likely have healthy and strong children and will also take good care of their offspring. So, females have to choose a good male that is also going to be a good dad.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: PG
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00110

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