Friday, February 09, 2007

Does something smell fishy?

My animal behavior professor has been gone for the past week, collecting these:

Scary, huh? I flipped out when I saw the pictures he showed us today, fish are not supposed to look like that. But the scariest part to me, simply because it is so weird, is that these fish sing. They sing! Like birds! To attract mates. I don't care what my professor says, fish are not supposed to be singing.



So yah, more about these fish. They are called plainfin midshipman fish and they live all along the Pacific coast. They live in deepish water of about 300 feet, but they come into the tidal flats to breed, to the extent that at low tide they may actually be out of the water for 2 hours or so. They do their humming-singing thing to attract mates. They are bio-luminescent. Oh yah, and they growl. Apparently if you walk along the beach during the summer when they are mating and you hear a funny noise coming from a nearby rock in the tidal flat, it is because the fish is growling to defend its territory. Gah! I'm not sure why, but something about these fish really creeps me out. And they are my professor's pride and joy. Go figure.

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