Clownfish communicate “loudly” to establish and defend their status in social groups and not to attract mates, according to a Belgian study published in the journal PLOS ONE .
These fish, which live in symbiosis with the evil anemones on coral reefs and made popular by the animated film Pixar Finding Nemo , form social groups in which the hierarchy depends on body size . Thus, it has been shown that the largest fish develops as a female, the second as a male and the rest of the group maintains a neutral gender. If the largest fish dies, the rest climb in the peculiar “ranking” to try to reproduce.
The new study reveals that, when establishing this social structure, clown fish do not fight as other species do, but instead choose to give “screams” And that there are two types of sounds: aggressive, something like fights accompanied by gestures of threat and harassment, and those of submission, emitted at the same time that they shake their heads by the animals located lower in the ranks.
