Herring Farts
Some people know that I am an old fart, and have therefore an abiding interest in farts, but I have not yet mastered using the fart for communication, except as it might be construed as some sort of anti-social, vaguely aggressive statement.
Through a chain of links that is now lost to me, I arrived at this fascinating fact from FishUpdate.com:
01 October, 2004 –
Flatulence may be a social faux pas for us, but for some fish it appears to be of great social value. Herring seem to fart to communicate with their neighbours at night – a discovery which scooped researchers Dr Bob Batty (Scottish Association for Marine Science), Dr Ben Wilson (University of British Columbia) and Professor Larry Dill (Simon Fraser University) an Ig Nobel award in Biology.
[…]
The fish, which gulp air from the surface and store it in their swim bladder, can release it through a duct to their anus. Although it was already known that herring could release large clouds of bubbles to confuse predators, releasing small bubbles intermittently when not under threat had not been seen or heard before.