May 11, 2011 Wired By Dave Mosher
The simple-sounding grunts and hoots of the toadfish contain surprisingly complex information. Sounds hidden within the toadfish calls may communicate everything from, “It’s me again, can we spawn?” to, “It’s your neighbor, but get away from my nest.”
Birds, amphibians and mammals often use hard-to-discern sounds to add an extra layer of vocal information. But these subtle harmonics and dissonances, called nonlinearities, hadn’t been observed in fish. Read the full article