Have you ever found out something really neat about something you already owned that you had never expected?
Well, I just discovered that the elephant nose fish that has been living in my aquarium for months has been talking this entire time (he’s called Mr. Chin because the "trunk" protuberance is actually below his mouth; sorry no good photos, he’s very darkly colored and he prefers to keep hidden under rocks).
Elephant nose fish use weakly electric charges to navigate and communicate in murky water. I had read that much in an aquarium book. What I had not known is that I could listen to these electric bursts.
The instructions (and some photos) are here, but they’re pretty simple. Put some wires in the water and hook them up to something that you can listen to.
I ended up buying an audio amp IC circuit at radio shack (they don’t stock piezo-electric earbuds anymore for some reason). I posted a youtube video of the device and you can hear the elephant nose’s clicks very clearly.
I’ll probably end up slapping this "fish amplifier" into a project enclosure that I can hang from the tank.
At this very moment I’m listening to my fish!