Fish Facts
Fish play a major role in the food chain and ecology of our planet. Following are a collection of fish facts, so you don’t have to fish around the net for them.
Fish Facts
Fish represent an integral step in the food chain. Fish feed on plants and small animals in the water transferring their energy to the fish. Other creatures than feed on the fish, man included, and take in the energy in the fish as energy in the form of calories. If fish were removed from the planet, the food chain would be devastated.
Here are some interesting fish facts:
- All fish are vertebrates meaning they have backbones.
- There are roughly 20,000 different types of fish.
- All fish hatch from eggs.
- All fish use gills to take water out of oxygen.
- All fish are cold blooded, which means their body temperature is tied to the water around them.
- The Bristlemouth is the most abundant fish with billions of them in the ocean. They are roughly 3 inches long.
- Fish sleep with their eyes open.
- Some fish, such as the Yelloweye Rockfish can live to be over 100 years old.
- The smallest fish is the “Goby”, which is around a quarter inch long when fully grown.
- The biggest fish is the whale shark, which can be 60 feet long and weigh over 40,000 pounds.
- A Plaice, a type of flounder fish, can reproduce complex patterns around it for camouflage purposes.
- A single piranha can’t eat a man, but it can take off a toe.
- Goldfish turn white if they aren’t exposed to the Sun.
- A lungfish can enter a state of suspended animation for three years. You could put it in the garage for 2 years, and it would survive!
- A particular fish in Florida, the Gurnard, makes grunting noises before thunderstorms and is absolutely accurate. Nobody understands the process.
- Most fish eat other fish.
- A number of fish species are born in fresh water, spend their adult life in the ocean and then return to the fresh water to breed. An example is Salmon.
- All fish secrete fluids onto their skins that make it easier to move through water.
- Fish breathe by drinking water and forcing it out their gills. The gills pull the oxygen out of the water as it is forced by.
- Whales are mammals, not fish.
From the colorful reef fish depicted in Finding Nemo to the Great White Shark in the movie Jaws, fish are amazing animals as these fish facts show.
