Jazzin' Instrumentals: Green Scat
This fish isn’t with tonight’s band, the Chris Greene Quartet, nor has it appeared, as far as we know, at the Green Mill Lounge, Uptown’s fabled jazz club. And, we confess, it does not sing, scat or otherwise.
But we love the green scat’s name—brought to our attention by collection manager Kathy Lee, a ready resource for so many of our animal blog series.
Look for this Indo-Pacific species in Wild Reef. Green scats live in brackish water—coastal areas where freshwater streams flow into ocean salt water, including estuaries, harbors and natural bays. They’re also frequently found in mangroves, which is where to look for them in Wild Reef. Their compressed bodies and dappled brown or red markings (on either a green or silver background, depending on the color morph) allow them to swim easily among the tangled upright roots of mangrove trees without being detected. If they are, green scats are armed with venomous dorsal spines that can inflict a painful wound.
For our series of Jazzin’ blogs, we associated this fish’s common name with scat singing—wordless vocal improvisation usually with nonsense syllables. The late, great jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald remains unsurpassed in using the voice to create an instrumental solo.
But fishes’ common names often derive from their scientific names, which
usually describe some biological characteristic or behavior. And so Scatophagus argus, shortened to “scat,” has an earthier association, courtesy of none other than Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, who classified these fish in 1766. The literal Greek translation of the species’ scientific name is “spotted feces eater.”
In reality, based on diet studies, our little jazz scats are omnivores: In the wild, they eat worms, crustaceans, insects, aquatic plants and algae. No scat. At Shedd, they are fed a variety of foods, including krill and clams, along with commercially prepared gelatin-based diets for carnivores and herbivores.
There are other misconceptions. Lise Watson, collection manager of Wild Reef, notes that guests frequently think the green scats are piranhas. “I’m not quite sure why,” she says.
So we know three things that the green scat isn’t, including a jazz singer. It is a beautiful fish that you might not have noticed before in Wild Reef that you can look for during Jazzin’ at the Shedd.
Jazzin' at the Shedd is sponsored by Bank of America.
Karen Furnweger, web editor
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