These Fish Work Together by The Hundreds of Thousands to Make Waves
Published:22 Dec.2021 Source:Cell Press
In the sports arena, spectators sometimes create a spectacle known as a wave, as successive groups stand up in unison to yell with arms in the air. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on December 22 have shown that small freshwater fish known as sulphur mollies do a similar thing, and for life or death reasons. The collective wave action produced by hundreds of thousands of fish working together helps to protect them from predatory birds.
"The surprises came once we realized how many fish can act together in such repeated waves," said Jens Krause of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin and Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence. "There are up to 4,000 fish per square meter and sometimes hundreds of thousands of fish participate in a single fish wave. Fish can repeat these waves for up to two minutes, with one wave approximately every three to four seconds."