All the Noise, Noise, Noise!!
Hello fans! Toni asked me, Burt, to tell you all about this new study she and her other gal pals were involved in, and I have to admit it’s pretty cool! Did you know that underwater noise pollution has been increasing over the past few decades? With more and more noise from boats, underwater drilling, and other human-generated activities, it’s getting pretty noisy for us fishes and other aquatic animals! So how does this underwater noise affect our behaviors and physiology you ask? Well, as usual, the scientists designed an experiment to test how noise impacted the ladies when they were mouthbrooding. They played loud noises from an underwater speaker during the mouth brood period and found that it impaired maternal care behaviors in mothers because lots of them either ate their babies or prematurely spit them out! These mothers also had high levels of a stress hormone called cortisol, and different expression levels of genes involved in maternal care behaviors and feeding in a specif