When herring fart, tonight on Fox!

My alma mater is in the news for some scientific research. Ben Wilson, a researcher at the University of B.C.'s Bamfield Marine Science Centre has won an Ig Nobel prize for his accidental discovery that herring eject air from their swimbladder in a way that sounds like er, um, passing wind.

(if you want to hear for yourself, check out this New Scientist story from shortly after the discovery, complete with wav file.

"It turns out that a fish ejecting air from the swimbladder via a tube near the anus, to the world's press at least, is near enough a [four letter slang word] and therefore hot news," Wilson tells the latest issue of Trek, UBC's alumni magazine, "They slavered down the phone like starved dogs."