I studied underwater acoustics in grad school. I also kept aquariums as a hobby. One day I wondered how loud the pumps were for my fish. I looked around, and couldn't find any academic publications on the topic. So I decided to find out!

I put a message on the Central Pennsylvania Reef Keeper forum, and people invited me to their homes with my equipment to take calibrated underwater noise measurements.

The result, "Survey of Ambient Noise in Aquariums" is here: https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.3425990

I thought the best part was going to be getting pictures of my aquariums in an academic journal - but it wasn't.

I presented the research to the Acoustical Society in a special section devoted to effects of noise on animals.

I was so nervous. This was not my normal research area, and I was presenting to world experts on effects of noise on animals! The talks before mine were so good, and I just measured some aquarium noise...

The presentation went well. Started with some background from about how pump noise can hurt commercial fish and shrimp breeding, talked about the measurements and some initial recommendations for quieting, and talked about future research.

Then came questions.

A woman near the front raised her hand, and then said "this might be a funny question, but you mentioned that noise can hurt shrimp breeding. I guess my question is: do shrimp have ears?"

So there I am, standing in front of a hundred or so the people who literally know the most of anyone in the world about how noise affects all sorts of animals, and I am being asked "do shrimp have ears?"

And I have no fucking clue.

I try to picture a shrimp with little ears on it. Ridiculous.

But they must be able to hear, right? Since noise affects them?

Then suddenly I realize - I had done all this work without even knowing if fish had ears?!?

A nice person in the audience recognized my terror and stood up. I learned that shrimp don't have ears, but they can hear. I learned that only some fish have ears, but all can hear, and some like salmon have three different hearing systems.

Anyway, I just found out that paper I wrote was cited by one with the title "Altered acoustic environments influence boldness in minnows" and it made my day.

Be bold minnows, be bold. Whether or not you have ears.