Fish Sound Production: The Swim Bladder

Sound Production in Fishes Sound production is nearly ubiquitous among various vertebrate taxa from fishes to mammals. However, although terrestrial vertebrates and marine mammals produce sounds that require air movement, fishes are unique in that they use a variety of mechanical systems that typically do not involve air movement. Indeed, the first vertebrates to produce sounds were likely primitive fishes, and the mechanisms of sound production had to be “reinvented” when vertebrates colonized land because fish sound-producing mechanisms likely did not produce enough acoustic energy to carry substantial distances in the low-density air environment (Gharhamani et al., 2014).