Clownfish noisemaker is new to science.Researchers have figured out how clownfish The clownfish, or anemonefish, are the subfamily Amphiprioninae of the family Pomacentridae. Currently 27 species exist, of which one is in the genus Premnas and the rest are in the subfamily's type genus Amphiprion. make "pop-pop-pop" noises at each other. The secret turns out to be an unusual tooth-clacking mechanism that scientists had never before documented. Plenty of fishes make noises, explains Eric Parmentier of the University of Liege liege In European feudal society, an unconditional bond between a man and his overlord. Thus, if a tenant held estates from various overlords, his obligations to his liege lord, to whom he had paid “liege homage,” were greater than his obligations to the other in Belgium. Most species either scrape bones together or vibrate air-filled swim bladders swim bladder, large, thin-walled sac in some fishes that may function in several ways, e.g., as a buoyant float, a sound producer and receptor, and a respiratory organ. . Those mechanisms don't generate sound with the right frequencies or other qualities to explain the noises of the clownfish Amphiprion clarkii, says Parmentier. These striped reef fish chirp or pop during courtship or daily life around the reef, or when an intruder An attacker that gains, or tries to gain, unauthorized access to a system. See attacker, intrusion and IDS. looms. To study the sounds in that last scenario, Parmentier and his colleagues worked with Michael Fine of Virginia Commonwealth University Formed by a merger between the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia in 1968, VCU has a medical school that is home to the nation's oldest organ transplant program. in Richmond. The lab team combined a high-speed video camera with X-ray equipment and recorded the fish's bone movements at 500 frames per second, 20 times the speed of a typical movie. When a male clownfish sees an intruder, he opens his jaws and then lifts his head, causing unusual ligaments to snap the jaws shut. The popping sound comes from the front teeth smacking smack·ing adj. Brisk; vigorous; spanking: a smacking breeze. Noun 1. smacking - the act of smacking something; a blow delivered with an open hand slap, smack together. The researchers tested the idea by sabotaging the ligament. When its jaw couldn't snap shut, the fish was mute, they report in the May 18 Science. Fish have evolved diverse ways of making sound, says Parmentier, and he predicts that the cichlids that he's studying now use yet another mechanism.--S.M. |
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