Some of Earth’s fish are known for their Herculean strength and funky vision. For the less than one inch long Danionella cerebrum, it’s their loud vocals. This tiny fish in the minnow and carp family can produce sounds louder than an airplane taking off as perceived by human ears at a distance of 328 feet, according to a study published February 26 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
[Related: World’s oldest living aquarium fish could be 100 years young.]
Danionella cerebrum is a small and translucent fish that was first discovered in 2021 in shallow and murky mountain streams in southern and eastern Myanmar. It has the smallest known vertebrate brain, but can hold its own with other members of the animal kingdom of all sizes when it comes to making noise. Small snapping shrimp can produce popping sounds of up to 250 decibels, while large elephants use their trunks to make noises up to 125 decibels.
“This tiny fish can produce sounds of over 140 decibels at a distance of 10 to 12 millimeters [about 0.4 inches],” Ralf Britz, a study co-author and ichthyologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Germany, said in a statement. “This is comparable to the noise a human perceives of an airplane during take-off at a distance of 100 meters [328 feet] and quite unusual for an animal of such diminutive size.”
For Danionella cerebrum, its impressive vocals come from sound-generating apparatus that helps them communicate with one another through cloudy waters. An international team of researchers took high-speed videos of groups of fish in a tank to observe how this specialized muscle works to make noise. It is made up of drumming cartilage, a specialized rib, and even…
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