Noisy Fish

Retirees in Florida are rockin' to the beat of a different drum...and they're not too thrilled about it.

Black drum mating calls travel at a low enough frequency and long enough wavelength to carry through sea walls, into the ground and through the construction of waterfront homes like the throbbing beat in a passing car.

In fact, lots of fishes, including the toadfish (see his handsome mug below) make sounds and today's New York Times has a wonderful article (with lots of extras) all about ocean noise. Also, check out Fishbase for sound recordings of fishes (click on "sounds" link under "more information" for the fish in question).

i-e42772dc4b37ee2275abbc566de7248e-fish_1_650.jpg

More like this

Thanks to two readers, the infamous Mike Witherspoon and the illustrious Tanya Poon, we have been alerted to two mega-sweet articles in the New York Times. The first from the Science Times yesterday tells the story of Cape Coral, Florida, a coastal town that was alarmed by a strange noise coming…
New Scientist's Feedback section has a running series of items on "nominative determinism", that strange phenomenon where a person's bears eerie witness to their occupation, such as a neurologist called Lord Brain, or an article on urology authored by Splatt and Weedon. Well here's another example…
Given the recent elephant hunting scandal, I thought I'd repost this award-winning piece from the archives, on a very clever way to deter elephants from raiding human settlements. Much cleverer than shooting them. (Click on the archives icon for the original.) What information is contained in the…
Perhaps you've heard about the wayward humpback whales, a mother and calf, who had become disoriented and began swimming inland towards Sacramento, California. They were traveling down the Sacramento River, causing a lot of grief to the Coast Guard and to marine biologists trying to think of a way…

Many doctors are polymaths---writers, musicians, surfers, but obviously, these things are relegated to hobby status. Still, medicine does not require one to abandon a creative life.

I always tell people that they shouldn't go to medical school unless they reallyreallyreally want to be a doctor. If they don't, it's expensive, depressing, I think people differ greatly on this issue. For example, if it were completely unidentifiable as my own, I would have no problem with thanks herkese