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Do You Know Fish?

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Question 1: Can fish swim backwards?

Answer: A number can, but most don’t. Those that can are primarily members of the eel family.

Question 2: Do fish chew their food?

Answer: Not the way people do! Carnivorous fish use their sharp teeth to seize and hold prey while swallowing it whole or in large pieces. Rays have large flat teeth to crush the shellfish they consume. Herbivorous fish usually lack jaw teeth but have grinding teeth in their throats. If fish tried to chew like humans, they would suffocate because chewing interferes with the passage of water over the gills, which provides the fish with oxygen.

Question 3: Can fish see color?

Answer: This question is hard to answer! Studies have shown that some fish see color and others only black and white. We know that they can see color shadings, reflected light, shape and movement. Studies have shown that rainbow trout and Pacific Salmon have color vision similar to humans.

Question 4: What fishes are named after other animals?

Answer: Goosefish, Porcupine fish, Sea Robin, Goosehead Scorpionfish, Honeycomb Cowfish, Sea Raven, Pigfish, Inshore Lizardfish, Eagle Ray, Sheepshead fish, Hogfish, Houndfish, Leopard Toadfish, Dogfish, Frogfish

Question 5: What are the five species of Pacific salmon that spawn in North America?

Answer: Chinook or king salmon, chum or dog salmon, coho or silver salmon, pink or humpback salmon, sockeye or red salmon

Question 6: Do all Pacific salmon die after spawning?

Answer: Yes! Even the landlocked Pacific salmon die after spawning.

Question 7: How large to Pacific salmon get?

Answer: The Chinook salmon is the largest of all the Pacific salmon with common weights exceeding 30 pounds. The record for the largest of the Pacific salmon species is 126 pounds for a Chinook salmon taken in a fish trap near Petersburg, Alaska in 1949.

Question 8: What is the oldest known age of salmon (in whole years)?

Answer: Chinook salmon (7 years), sockeye salmon (7 years), silver salmon (4 years), chum salmon (6 years), pink salmon (2 years)

Question 9: How many eggs do salmon deposit?

Answer: Generally from 2,500 – 7,000 eggs depending on species and size of fish.

Question 10: What are fishladders for?

Answer: Fishladders are built to let fish swim upstream over a dam or a natural barrier that might otherwise keep them from reaching their spawning grounds.

Question 11: How can we tell a fish's age?

Answer: We use the fish’s otolith, which is the bone located just behind the ear and is used for hearing. Each year the fish typically experiences rapid growth in the summer and a period of slower growth normally in the winter. This results in the formation of rings like those seen on a cross-section of a tree. So just like counting the rings of a tree, we count the number of lines on an otolith. One line equals one year.

Question 12: What is the largest fish in the world?

Answer: The whale shark is the largest shark and largest fish, weighing in at 50,000 pounds and up to 50 feet long. The next largest fish is the basking shark at 32,000 pounds followed by the great white shark at 7,000 pounds.

Question 13: What is the smallest fish in the world?

Answer: The smallest fish (Paedocypris progenetica) is a member of the carp family and lives in Sumatra. It is 7.9 mm (less than 1/3 inch) long.

Question 14: How long have fish been on the Earth?

Answer: More than 450 million years!

Question 15: How many identified species of fish are there on the Earth?

Answer: Over 25,000 species!

Question 16: What part of the fish helps to keep it afloat so that it doesn’t have to constantly swim?

Answer: Its air bladder or swim bladder allows the fish to move up and down in the water without constantly swimming.

Question 17: How do fish navigate in dark, murky water?

Answer: They use their lateral line. The lateral line is a sense organ that works like radar to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water.

Question 18: What is the State fish of Alaska?

Answer: The Chinook, or king, salmon became the state fish in 1962.

Question 19: How do salmon navigate to their natal (birth) streams?

Answer: Using their keen sense of smell.

Question 20: How long does a salmon spend in the ocean?

Answer: Between 1 and 5 years depending on how long it takes them to reach sexual maturity.

Question 21: What about salmon in European mythology?

Answer: In Norse mythology, when Loki, god of mischief and strife, killed Baldr, god of beauty and light, he jumped into the river and transformed himself into a salmon in order to escape punishment from the other gods. When they held out a net to trap him he attempted to leap over it but was caught by Thor who grabbed him by the tail with his hand, and this is why the salmon's tail is tapered.

Question 22: What did the Tlingit do with the salmon after catching and eating it?

Answer: They returned the bones to the ocean so that the bones could come back to life as new salmon people.

Question 23: What is the most widely geographically distributed salmonid species?

Answer: The cutthroat trout and it can be found almost anywhere that a salmonid can survive.

Question 24: What was the largest fresh water fish ever caught?

Answer: In 2005, Thai fishermen netted a 646 pound Mekong giant catfish.

Question 25: How long does a salmon spend in the stream where it is born?

Answer: Salmon spend 1-3 years in freshwater before migrating to the ocean.

Question 26: Can fish hear?

Answer: Fish do not have outer ears like humans but they have enclosed organs on either side of the head, behind the eyes, that respond to sound waves in the water.

Question 27: Do trout prefer lakes or streams?

Answer: Trout prefer lakes because the water moves more slowly and the trout doesn’t have to use as much energy to stay in one place while waiting for drifting food.

Question 28: How can you tell a cutthroat trout from a steelhead or rainbow trout?

Answer: Cutthroat trout have teeth on their tongue called hyoid teeth.

Question 29: What part of its body does a salmon use to dig its nest?

Answer: Its tail

Question 30: Who does the digging, the male or the female?

Answer: The female digs into the gravel and then waits for the male to come along to spawn.

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Last Modified: September 19, 2007