Clownfish Talk to Keep the Peace: Clownfish
negotiate with each other through a series of clicks and pops in order to maintain their social structure,
reports LiveScience.com.
The "Finding Nemo" fish live in anemomes on coral reefs in groups of up to six. The
biggest fish is female, the second-biggest male and the others sexless until they're older.
The fish talk
to each other, clicks up the power ladder, pops down the power ladder. Paired with some charging and
chasing from the biggest fish, the peace is kept.
"Sound could be an interesting strategy for preventing
conflict between group members," lead study author Orphal Colleye, a postdoctoral fellow at the University
of Liège, Belgium, told LiveScience. "In terms of cost energy, you don't have to interact with another
individual to determine which is the dominant and which is the subordinate, you just need to make a
sound."
Sounds like a U.N. under the sea…
via NBCNews.com
