Some interesting fish facts

[Paul B]

The best way to keep an animal like a fish healthy is to know how it makes it's living.
We are after all very distant relatives of fish (if you believe Darwin) so we should have some sort of understanding of the way they feel.
We don't see the way fish see, we don't feel the way fish feel, and we also don't eat the way fish eat. Fish don't have tongues and they don't "really" chew. (Try chewing without using your tongue) They bite a piece of food, then spit out smaller pieces and bite them again until they can get the food small enough so they can swallow it. Humans, as air breathing animals living on a flat surface only have to be concerned about going forward, backward and from side to side. Fish on the other hand add to that up and down. That "œup and down" movement not only comes into play while swimming around aimlessly but also hunting and being hunted. At a moments notice a fish must determine which way to go to evade a predator. It has many choices and its tiny brain determines this effortlessly.
Fish can use a number of fins to swim with and they also have two means of buoyancy control. A fish's liver is full of oil, oil floats and allows the fish to be just slightly heavier then water. Without its liver a fish would sink. Most fish also have a swim bladder so that they can become neutrally buoyant, that's why a fish like a clownfish can remain perfectly motionless in the water without using its fins. A fish can control the volume of air in it's bladder to a certain extent and some fish like freshwater lungfish and beta's can use it to breathe.
Sharks do not have a swim bladder and must keep swimming to remain afloat, but a shark has a huge liver that could be ¼ of its weight, this is full of oil for buoyancy. A shark also lacks any bones so it is lighter than a bony fish.
Fish also can "œfeel" things from a distance. Some call this "œremote feel" or "œremote senses". All real fish have a thin line starting from their head and running down their sides to their tail. This "œlateral line" is directly connected to a fish's brain and allows the fish to "œfeel" objects all around and even behind it. That's why it is difficult to catch a fish with a net, even with the lights out. Most fish can feel the "œecho" of water pressure bouncing off an object similar to how sonar works and many fish can sense the electric field created by the mussels of other animals. Sharks are experts at this and hammer head shark, with the large sensory organ across their wide head are the masters.
If you notice, fish never crash into the glass walls of their tank, even in total darkness.
And from the angle fish are viewing the glass; they can't see it because they can see right through it just as we can see in from the outside.
Large schools of fish like sardines can swim fractions of an inch from each other while turning and twisting in unison, and they can do this without looking at their neighbor.
Many of the fish we commonly keep can dive into a coral head without getting a scratch and some fish can hunt in complete darkness. If a fish loses an eye, it barely notices this would be disability and gets on with its life like nothing happened.
Some fish have no eyes and get along just fine.
Fish also have no real noses but they detect odors better than we do and they can tell where the origin of those odors are even in a tank with the water swirling around them or in the sea with the tides and waves.
If you put food in a tank, the fish immediately know where it is. Crustaceans can find the food even sooner due to their even better detection systems.
These are just some things to think about as we check out our fish. They are perfectly suited to their surroundings, much better than we are. :fish2:

 

[billsreef]

Fish do have tongues (some even have teeth on the tongue), and even a whole family of Isopod parasites that specialize in latching onto and replacing the tongue :eek1:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Do-fishes-have-tongues/

 

[ReachTheSky]

Trout have a particularly nasty pair of teeth on their tongues. They make getting that hook out a real pain sometimes.

 

[Paul B]

Fish do have tongues

Let me go and get my copperband to open wide for me.
I will get back to you :lol2:

 

[Paul B]

Don't make me look this stuff up Bill, I am old and tired. :bum:

OK, I'm back, Here is what I found out, Arowana's have a tongue.

The arowanas do.

Arowana's
Osteoglossum bicirrhosum are characterized by remarkable scale arrangements in which the scales are large, stout, bony and ornamented in a way that the radii form a course pattern. The scales are a pearly silver in color and change to reds, blues and greens as the fish ages. They are also well known for their bony tongue, after which it is named. Osteoglossum bicirrhosum are laterally compressed with a huge oblique mouth. Many oral bones bear teeth, including the jaw, palate, tongue and pharynx. They reach a maximum length of about 120 cm. ()

Here is another one

An excerpt from source material:

"All sharks (and "bony" fish) have "tongues", though they aren't much like ours, or any other tetrapod (the "four-limbed" non-fish vertebrates) for that matter. Therefore, shark and fish "tongues" aren't called tongues at all--they are called basihyals. The basihyal is found on the floor of the mouth of sharks and fishes, just as our tongue is placed on the floor of our mouths. But that's about where the similarity ends! Whereas tongues in tetrapods are generally large (or long), flexible and extremely useful, the basihyal is basically just a small, stout, and only vaguely tongue-like piece of cartilage. It is the forward-most part of the basibranchial, a cartilaginous bar-like structure running down the midline of the shark or fish's chest that supports the lower gill-related bones."

But they can't stick it out at you when they are mad.:lol2:
So Bill, if you want to call that a tongue, you can. I know that you know that you like to argue with me. :wavehand:

 

[billsreef]

Don't make me look this stuff up Bill, I am old and tired. :bum:

I don't believe that for a minute

But they can't stick it out at you when they are mad.:lol2:
So Bill, if you want to call that a tongue, you can. I know that you know that you like to argue with me. :wavehand:

I know many an Ichthyology professor that calls it a tongue Heck, even my old Ichthyology text book called it a tongue. I was always fascinated by the ones with teeth on their tongues, some even have teeth in their throats. Wild stuff Besides, I know you like learning this stuff

 

[Paul B]

I know many an Ichthyology professor that calls it a tongue

I bet that ichthyology professor also had teeth on his tongue.
He also probably never filleted a fish and ate one after looking in it's mouth, just looked at them in books.
The next time you go to a seafood restaurant, order a fish tongue.
OK call it a tongue. :mixed:

 

[billsreef]

I bet that ichthyology professor also had teeth on his tongue.
He also probably never filleted a fish and ate one after looking in it's mouth, just looked at them in books.
The next time you go to a seafood restaurant, order a fish tongue.
OK call it a tongue. :mixed:

He might have had teeth on his tongue, I never looked

Though he definitely has filleted and eaten fish. He also had quite the collection of fish skeletons and pickled fish from all over the world, along with getting us lots of hands on with fresh caught local fish during our labs. Thing about the books, he showed us the classic fish picture in the text and told us it was the only place we'd see that fish

 

[Paul B]

Bill, I grew up with fish, my family had a seafood business and I practically slept with dead fish. Never saw a tongue but they do have that hard cartlige looking stiff thing that can move a little up and down. I don't think it would help much for chewing.
They may be able to chew on an ichthyology professor though :lol2: