Clownfish gossip by shaking jaws

The Nemo clown fish in the Walt Disney cartoon speaks English, but the real clown fish communicate in a different, unique way.

High-speed video images and X-ray technology have shown clown fish smashing two jaws together to create alarming sounds before they attack. This is the first time a fish is known to communicate in this way, the researchers said.

Scientists have known for nearly 80 years that clownfish create a series of rapid clicks when they detect a territorial invader, or want to attack a potential mate.

"It's like someone knocking on the door," Eric Parmentier from Liege University in Belgium, who studies the behavior of the creature, described. Clownfish produce about 5 clicks per second when communicating, but how they make this noise is still a mystery.

Parmentier and colleagues used high-speed videos to record and analyze body movements of Amphiprion clarkii clownfish. The team surmised that the sound was generated from the movement of the jaw, so they implanted pieces of metal 1-2 millimeters into the jawbone of the fish, and tracked them with X-ray technology. they move their jaws very much the same way we " floss " when cold.

Amphiprion clarkii Clownfish (Photo: Newscientist)

T. An