You Gotta Wonder

Scientific endeavors lead to all types of little known factoids.  Though I admire the fact that we have the ability to study all types of minutia, at times I wonder about the benefit gained.  When new minutia findings are released to the world, with the excitement exhibited by the clams in a B.C. comic, I often don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head in wonderment at the amount of time and energy expended in exploring such a minute item.  Here’s just one such announcement.  Fish fart. Yes, you read that right.  Fish fart.  Specifically, herrings fart.  You can listen to a farting herring here.

I read about this in my most recent issue of Fly Fisherman and thought I better pass it on.  I’m not sure what is funnier, the fact that fish fart or that intelligent minds are investigating farting fish.

The first two paragraphs from the linked article.

"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.  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."

Posted by on 03/15 at 01:13 PM

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