More than eight hundred fish species are known to hoot, moan, grunt, groan, thump, bark, or otherwise vocalize. CREDIT ILLUSTRATION BY KYLE T. WEBSTER

Thanks to Emily Anthes and the Elements section of the New Yorker‘s website for this post expanding our sonic horizons, and especially for the accompanying recordings to assure you that fish can shout:

In 1909, a French doctor named Étienne Lombard discovered something that most people intuitively know: humans raise their voices in noisy environments. Lombard first observed the effect—which came to be named for him—at the Hôpital Lariboisière, in Paris, where he noted that his patients spoke more loudly when he filled their ears with the hiss or crackle of a “deaf-making apparatus.” The patients seemed to adjust the volume of their speech reflexively, and Lombard suggested that the phenomenon could be used to identify malingerers—those who were faking their hearing loss in order to collect workers’ compensation.

Lombard wrote an account of his study in 1911, for a French journal called Annales des Maladies de l’Oreille, du Larynx, du Nez, et du Pharynx. Since then, other researchers have expanded on his findings. They’ve discovered that, in noisy conditions, we do more than just amplify our voices—we also raise our pitch and elongate our vowels, changes that make our speech more intelligible. And the Lombard effect isn’t limited to humans. Animals use acoustic signalling for many purposes—to attract and court mates, to claim territory and frighten enemies, to find prey and warn others that a predator is near. But nature is noisy. Rain and wind, or a sudden cicada plague, can drown out a call, and there may be a survival advantage for animals that can make themselves heard above the racket. A wide range of creatures, from killer whales to nightingales, demonstrate the Lombard effect—and, according to a recent paper in Behavioral Ecology, some fish do, too.

We may think of them as silent, but fish make many sounds that are rarely appreciated by the human ear. Clownfish chirp and pop by gnashing their teeth together. Oyster toadfish hum and blare like foghorns by quickly contracting muscles attached to their swim bladders. Croaking gourami make their signature noise by snapping the tendons of their pectoral fins. Altogether, more than eight hundred fish species are known to hoot, moan, grunt, groan, thump, bark, or otherwise vocalize. Carol Johnston, an ecologist at Auburn University, is partial to the sounds made by lollipop darters, small fish native to Alabama and Tennessee. “They sound like whales,” she told me.

Read the whole post here.