---
title: "Chemical Brothers and Fatlip’s ‘The Salmon Dance’ fact-checked: salmon smell holds up, the moon does not"
url: https://badiyaa.com/salmon-dance-chemical-brothers-fatlip-facts/
published: 2026-11-13T01:00:00+00:00
modified: 2026-11-13T01:00:00+00:00
section: Entertainment
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# Chemical Brothers and Fatlip’s ‘The Salmon Dance’ fact-checked: salmon smell holds up, the moon does not

The Chemical Brothers and Fatlip's 2007 single The Salmon Dance teaches six salmon facts; four match the science of the salmon run, two are shaky.

The star of the Chemical Brothers’ 2007 single “The Salmon Dance” is not a salmon. In the video, “Sammy the Salmon” is actually a squirrelfish, swimming in a boy’s tropical aquarium next to a piranha voiced by the Pharcyde’s Fatlip and a beatboxing pufferfish called Puffa.

That mix-up is a fitting start for one of the strangest crossover hits of the 2000s: a big-beat dance track that doubles as a children’s science lesson, rapped by a West Coast hip-hop veteran. So how much of the lesson holds up? Badiyaa checked the song’s fish facts against the scientific account of the salmon run.

## How a Pharcyde rapper ended up in a fish tank

Fatlip, born Derrick Stewart in 1969, rapped on the Pharcyde’s *Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde* and *Labcabincalifornia* before leaving the group, then made the solo album *The Loneliest Punk* in 2005. Two years later, English duo Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons brought him in for “The Salmon Dance,” the seventh track on their album *We Are the Night*. All three share the writing credit.

The single came out on September 10, 2007, reached No. 27 in the UK, topped the UK dance chart and hit No. 10 in New Zealand. Directors Dom and Nic made the aquarium video, which earned an MTV Europe Music Award nomination. It also turned into a long-running chart footnote: it was the duo’s last UK top-40 single for 19 years, until “Go” reached No. 4 in May 2026.

## The fish facts, checked

Fatlip opens by promising “fun facts about salmon.” Here is how each one compares with the science:

- **Fresh water, then salt water:** correct. Most salmon are anadromous, hatching in rivers, growing up at sea, then returning upstream to spawn.

- **Dying after spawning:** mostly right. All Pacific salmon die after spawning, and so do most Atlantic salmon, though about 5 to 10% of Atlantic fish, mainly females, survive to spawn again. Most spawned-out fish die within days; some hang on for a couple of weeks.

- **Finding home by smell:** correct. In 1978, researcher Arthur Hasler and his students showed salmon recognize the characteristic smell of their home river, imprinted when they are young. The song’s extra claim that this nose beats a dog’s or a bear’s is not something that research measured.

- **Tides, currents and the moon:** shakier. The main navigation theories involve Earth’s magnetic field, backed by magnetite found in sockeye skulls, plus smell near the river mouth. The moon does not feature.

- **Swimming “to Japan and back”:** a stretch for one fish, but Pacific salmon species do run up rivers on both the Asian and North American sides of the ocean.

- **Pollution kills young and adult salmon:** supported. In 2009 US federal fisheries scientists warned that three common pesticides running into rivers threatened endangered Pacific salmon.

That is roughly four out of six facts holding up cleanly, which is a better hit rate than most dance-floor science.

## The real salmon run

The actual journey is more extreme than the song lets on. Chinook and sockeye from central Idaho travel about 900 miles and climb nearly 7,000 feet to spawn, and the fish stop eating on the way. Salmon have been recorded leaping as high as 12 feet up waterfalls, which makes the hand-wave dance look easy.

Badiyaa has covered both ends of that journey: a [black bear eating salmon under an Alaska waterfall](https://badiyaa.com/black-bear-shower-beer-award-anan-creek-waterfall/) that won a wildlife photo award, and [Chinook salmon returning to California’s Alameda Creek](https://badiyaa.com/alameda-creek-chinook-salmon-fish-passage/) after 18 barriers were cleared.

As for Fatlip, he released his second solo album, *Torpor*, in July 2022, and a collaborative record with Blu, *Live from the End of the World*, followed on April 14, 2023.

## Further reading

- [Wikipedia: The Salmon Dance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salmon_Dance)

- [Wikipedia: Salmon run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_run)

*Image: Ron Shawley, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*