Here is something quite telling.  The other day I read that scientists from a university in Berlin have discovered a tiny winy fish that can make a sound as loud as a gunshot or a jackhammer, equivalent to 140 decibels.  What makes this impressive is the size of the fish: about 12mm, which is too small to allow the typical sound-generating mechanisms in fish of this size to produce such a volume.

The team filmed the fish, called Danionella cerebrum, over an extended period and discovered that in this creature the sound is generated through a completely different system, and that is how it can accomplish such a feat.  I am not going to get into the details, but if you are interested, you can read it in the article referenced below.

I find this phenomenon very telling and in fact very characteristic of certain human behavior.  This fish has the smallest known brain of any vertebrate, and only the male Danionella makes this sound. The females do not have the same rib hardness to allow them to make such a sound.

The article explains that the scientists are not sure what the purpose of the sound is.  They hypothesize that it may allow it to navigate murky waters and/or be a tactic by males to drive away competitors－but we don’t know competitor in what field: food collection or love connection.

You are still wandering what makes me say this is telling and very characteristic of human behavior?  Well, in the movie American Gangster, Denzel Washington tells his brother－in the movie, of course－that the loudest person in a room is the weakest person.  And when you add that to another public wisdom that ‘the loudest people aren’t always the smartest’ you see how we, humans, have masses of Danionellas among us!

^* One of world’s smallest fish found to make sound as loud as a gunshot, The Guardian, February 27, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/27/smallest-fish-sounds-loud-danionella-cerebrum

Paris, February 29, 2024

Zeejay