The Noisy Neighbors Who Live Underwater

New York Times reports that in Florida the mating calls of a fish species called black drum resonated through the homes of retirees in Cape Coral, leading to the neighbors to push the City Council to eliminate the noise. Nobody would believe that the source of the noise reverbaration was fish. ”For most fish, the sonic mechanism is a muscle that vibrates a swim bladder not unlike our vocal cord. The bladder is a gas-filled sac used for buoyancy, but it can also be used as a sort of drum. The Gulf toadfish contracts its sonic muscle against its swim bladder thousands of times a minute to generate a loud drone. At nearly three times the average wingbeat of a hummingbird, toadfish have the fastest known muscle of any vertebrate. Cusk eel rattle bones against their bladder, but clownfish have a sonic ligament they use to “chirp.” You can read the full article and hear some sound examples here.