animals

Saturday, May 12, 2007

No mollusc

or crustacean can produce any natural voice or sound.
Fishes can produce no voice, for they have no lungs, nor windpipe
and pharynx; but they emit certain inarticulate sounds and squeaks,
which is what is called their 'voice', as the lyra or gurnard, and the
sciaena (for these fishes make a grunting kind of noise) and the
caprus or boar-fish in the river Achelous, and the chalcis and the
cuckoo-fish; for the chalcis makes a sort piping sound, and the
cuckoo-fish makes a sound greatly like the cry of the cuckoo, and is
nicknamed from the circumstance. The apparent voice in all these
fishes is a sound caused in some cases by a rubbing motion of their
gills, which by the way are prickly, or in other cases by internal
parts about their bellies; for they all have air or wind inside
them, by rubbing and moving which they produce the sounds. Some
cartilaginous fish seem to squeak.