Loud Toadfish

June 23, 2019
By Damond Benningfield


Male toadfish make “grunt” noises to drown out the other Toadfish mating calls. Photo Credit: Silke Baron/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic



The toadfish isn’t much to look at. It has bulging eyes, a wide head, and warty-looking skin. Males are good fathers, though. Unlike most fish, they guard the juveniles against predators.

The males begin their courtship ritual by making burrows in rocky ledges or empty shells. They then emit a series of calls to attract females. The low-pitched calls are quite loud. A “chorus” of them produced by many toadfish can overpower the sounds of other creatures.

Researchers at the University of Texas studied the sounds produced by male toadfish along the coast of Panama. They found that the fellas tried to sabotage each other -- they grunted over the calls emitted by others. And they responded not just to the sounds of the closest competitors, but to the entire neighborhood. So when the fish were closer together, each one made even more noise.

That suggests that how tightly packed the toadfish are is just as important as how many there are in determining how noisy the toadfish will be.