If a fish could talk… it could actually talk. Well almost, as it seems fish have vocal circuitry that is similar to that of humans.
Andrew Bass, a neurobiologist at Cornell University, has been studying the midshipman’s vocal habits for more than a decade. Recently, he and two colleagues mapped out the neural circuitry that controls the fish’s soundmaking. They found that a set of rhythmically firing neurons control the fish’s vocal muscles and the pitch and duration of its calls. And by tracking the brain development of larval fish, they discovered that the neurons grow at the base of the hindbrain and the upper part of the spinal cord. That vocal circuitry is remarkably similar in location and function to brain structures found in other vertebrates that vocalize, including birds, amphibians, and mammals.
