00:01 05 November 03
NewScientist.com news service
Biologists have linked a mysterious, underwater farting sound to
bubbles coming out of a herring’s anus. No fish had been known to emit
sound from its anus nor to be capable of producing such a high-pitched
noise.
“It sounds just like a high-pitched raspberry,” says Ben Wilson of the
University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (Listen here, .wav
file). Wilson and his colleagues cannot be sure why herring make this
sound, but initial research suggests that it might explain the puzzle
of how shoals keep together after dark.
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