The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 364: CHAP. 89. (70.)—WHICH FISHES HAVE THE BEST HEARING.

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The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 89. (70.)—WHICH FISHES HAVE THE BEST HEARING.

Fishes have neither organs of hearing, nor yet the exterior orifice. And yet, it is quite certain that they do hear; for it is a well-known fact, that in some fish-ponds they are in the habit of being assembled to be fed by the clapping of the hands. In the fish-ponds, too, that belong to the Emperor, the fish are in the habit of coming, each kind as it bears its name.3126 So too, it is said, the mullet, the wolf-fish, the salpa, and the chromis, have a very exquisite sense of hearing, and that it is for this reason that they frequent shallow water.