This fish may play a hole in its head like a drum

For the rockhead poacher, the noises are all in its head. 

The fish is a pint-size, unassuming inhabitant of nearshore shallows, but it has a conspicuous divot in the top of its skull that appears to work like a drum. New research suggests that flattened, mobile ribs may rap against the pit’s underside like drumsticks, possibly so the fish can communicate with other members of its species.

“No fish has anything like this,” says functional morphologist Daniel Geldof, who defended the work in December for his master’s thesis at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

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