FISHES : SENSES on Yahoo! Kids

Fish

Senses
Fishes have the same five senses that humans have: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. They use their senses to look for food, avoid predators, find a partner to spawn with, and to find their way around their habitat. Many fishes have highly adapted senses that allow them to smell food from very far away or detect vibrations in the water.

Fish eye. © Scot Stewart

Fish Eyes
Fishes’ eyes are like humans’ eyes but they focus in a different way. Humans have muscles that change the shape of the lens in the eye, but fishes have muscles that move their lenses back and forth. They focus on objects much as a camera focuses. Fishes see in color, just as people do.

Do Fishes Smell?
The smell detectors in fishes are in sacs in front of the eyes. Fishes smell by pumping water in through two front nostrils and use these smell detectors to sample chemicals in the water. The water then passes out through the rear two nostrils. Sharks have an amazing sense of smell. Even under the sea they can detect very small amounts of blood and oil from an injured fish miles away.

Great White Shark © James D. Watt - seapics.com

Fish Ears
Although fishes have no external ears (their ears are inside their head), they still have a keen sense of hearing. Some fishes communicate by making sounds and listening for a response from a member of their own species.

Brown Bullhead © Phil Degginger - Color-Pic, Inc.

Fishy Taste
Human tastebuds are on the tongue but in some fishes the tastebuds are scattered over the outside of the body! The tastebuds of catfishes are concentrated on barbels, the whiskerlike projections near the mouth. The Brown Bullhead uses its barbels (or whiskers) to find food in murky waters and to find other catfishes.

Lateral Line
Fishes have a special sense organ called the lateral line that detects vibrations in the water. It runs along both sides of the fish just below the skin and sometimes appears as a thin black stripe. Fishes use the lateral line to sense movement in the water, the temperature of the water, and to maintain their balance.

Scup, showing lateral line. © Herb Segars

Electric Fishes
Some fishes can detect weak electrical currents in the water using special organs called electroreceptors. They use this ability mostly to “sense” when other fishes are nearby. Other fishes, like electric rays and catfishes, produce a powerful electrical charge that stuns their prey.

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