60 – Second Science Talks Fish Noises in the Amazon
Catfish screeches and pirhanna barks – while that may sound like the beginning of an awesome magical realist short story with a sprinkling of doom on top or the opening lyrics to a folk metal release you can actually hear these sounds on Scientific American!
Six years ago, the fish ecologist Rodney Rountree was on a skiff in the Peruvian Amazon. He was holding a piranha in his hand…underwater…in a river filled with other piranhas. Maybe, hungry ones.
“That thought crossed my mind a little bit. The water was essentially no visibility. So I did worry a little bit about that but there was no other way to do it.”
The job he needed to do? “Audition them, for sound production.” Because Rountree studies the sounds fish make. His nickname—and the name of his company: “The Fish Listener.”
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!