Noise and vibration in the car: a stressor that also hits the fish's hearing
Published by Planète Pets · managing editor: Clément Lacaille · how our guides are written
Bringing a fish home from the shop or moving it during a house move is mostly a question of temperature, bag and duration — the usual topics of our fish travel and safety section. But a car cabin adds a factor that is easy to overlook: engine noise, road noise, and sometimes the car stereo, transmitted straight into the bag or box sitting on the seat.
Contents · 4 sections
Fish hear better than most people assume
Many aquarium fish — danios, barbs, tetras, corydoras — belong to the otophysan group: a chain of small bones, the Weberian apparatus, links their swim bladder to their inner ear and amplifies sound vibrations. This heightened hearing, useful for detecting a predator, becomes a drawback in a noisy, confined space like a moving car.
What the study on the blacktail shiner found
A study published in 2015 by Crovo, Mendonça, Holt and Johnston in PLOS ONE exposed the blacktail shiner (Cyprinella venusta), a North American otophysan fish, to a recording of road traffic noise played back in its tank (, doi 10.1371/journal.pone.0137290). Acute exposure alone was enough to significantly raise the fish's cortisol levels. After two hours of continuous exposure, their hearing threshold was also shifted at 300 and 400 Hz: they temporarily heard less well, a sign of auditory fatigue comparable to what is seen in other vertebrates after loud, prolonged noise.
This experiment simulates road noise in a laboratory tank, not an actual car ride, and it was not run on an aquarium species. But belonging to the same broad otophysan group makes the mechanism — measurable stress and temporarily impaired hearing from noise alone, independent of motion or temperature — plausible for commonly kept aquarium fish.
What actually changes during the ride
Engine noise, body vibration and especially the bass from a car stereo travel easily through a plastic bag sitting directly on the seat or in the boot. A few simple precautions limit this exposure: rest the bag or box on a thick cloth rather than bare metal, avoid loud music or bass-heavy speakers during the ride, and prefer an insulated boot over the area above the wheels, which vibrates more. These steps add to, rather than replace, those covered in our article on the physiology of transport stress.
Frequently asked questions
Is noise worse than the car's motion for the fish?
The study does not compare the two factors against each other: it isolates noise alone and shows that it is enough to generate measurable stress. Motion, noise and temperature change likely add up rather than substitute for one another.
Should the transport bag be cushioned with foam or cloth?
It is a reasonable, low-risk precaution, consistent with the mechanism described by the study, even though it was not tested as such: it dampens vibration transmitted through the car body without otherwise hindering transport.
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This guide is part of Planète Pets’s Fishkeeping universe. Our advice is general in nature: for any health concern, your veterinarian remains the only reference.