Some African fish signal their amorous intentions by exchanging bursts of electrical impulses, a new study has found.
The behavior is similar to the courtship duets of songbirds, say researchers who studied the African electric fish known to scientists as Brienomyrus brachyistius.
Like other members of the elephantfish family, the fish produce weak electrical fields using specialized organs in their tails.
Previous studies had found that males used certain electric pulses during aggressive encounters.
But until now, the love life of electric fish was largely a private matter, said Carl Hopkins of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
"It is really hard to get these finicky fish to breed in the lab, and also hard to separate out the pulses from more than one fish to tell whose discharges are from whom," Hopkins said.
He and undergraduate Ryan Wong finally succeeded on both fronts, employing a variety of tricks including sprinkling tanks with artificial rain to simulate breeding-season conditions.
The researchers used recording equipment and custom software to observe both the electrical signaling and physical behavior of the fish.
The most surprising observation, Wong said, "was that there appears to be electrical 'duetting' occurring between the sexes during courtship."
In particular, males and females seemed to make specific "sounds" before, during, and after mating, he said. The signals aren't actually songs, because the fish sense them electrically rather than acoustically, Wong added.
Senses and Signals
Unlike the jolt of an electric eel, the fields generated by Brienomyrus are too weak to stun prey.
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