Sharks at a Verona aquarium are being played Christmas carols after a recent American study revealed that fish can recognise melodies.
Gardaland Sea Life curator Sabrina Repetto said the 20 different shark species at the aquarium would be monitored for their reactions to piped festive music such as Jingle Bells and So This is Christmas.
''It's a bit of Christmas fun for the staff and the visitors, but it's also an interesting experiment and we will be watching the sharks carefully to monitor their reaction,'' Repetto said.
It is thought that species who spend most of their time lying at the bottom of tanks will give the clearest signs of whether they are enjoying the Christmas tunes.
''If they don't appreciate a certain melody, in all likelihood the sharks will come up from the bottom of the tank and swim to the other side,'' Repetto explained.
The same experiment is also under way in aquariums in the United Kingdom following the study by Harvard University's Rowland Institute for Science, which revealed that fish could recognise a sequence of 84 notes from a Rachmaninoff symphony.
