Fish Feeding and Digestive Systems Practice

Flashcards covering fish feeding behavior, sensory organs, capture mechanisms, and anatomical structures of the digestive system.

Planktivorous

A feeding habit where fishes consume planktons.

Piscivorous

A feeding habit where fishes consume other fishes.

Carnivorous

A feeding habit where fishes consume other animals such as fishes, crustaceans, squids, and gastropods.

Omnivorous

A feeding habit where fishes consume both other animals and plants.

Herbivorous

A feeding habit where fishes consume plants.

Evacuation

The fourth step of feeding behavior involving the discharge of waste.

Olfactory organs

Sensory organs used for smell that provide the farthest distance detection of food.

Neuromasts

Sensory organs used for touch and flow detection; free neuromasts provide medium distance detection whereas canal neuromasts provide very close detection.

Ram feeding

A feeding mechanism where a fish swims over a prey item with its mouth open without generating suction or manipulating the prey, used by tunas and whale sharks.

Suck feeding

A feeding mechanism that depends on the ability to create sufficient negative pressure in the oral cavity to suck individual food items from surrounding water.

Suction feeding

The most common mode of prey capture involving the rapid expansion of the buccal cavity to draw water and prey into the mouth via a pressure gradient.

Biting

A feeding mechanism where fishes obtain prey by physically contacting it and bringing it into the mouth, often specialized for eating scales or pieces of plants.

Gill rakers (Planktivorous)

Structures with a high density of thin, long, and soft rakers used to filter phyto- and zoo-planktons from the water.

Gill rakers (Carnivorous)

Structures with a low density of short, sharp, and hard rakers that help the fish hold captured prey for ingestion.

Esophagus

The starting point of the digestive system where food is broken down, connected to the stomach or intestinal tract.

Frogfishes

Also known as anglerfish, these utilize a "fishing pole" derived from the first spine of the dorsal fin and a "bait" to attract prey.

Spitting

A reversed suction action of the orobuccal cavity completed by forceful opercular compression to reject food based on palatability.

Rinsing

A cleaning process where large food items trapped in the pharyngeal slit are cleaned by intensive pumping, with waste particles flushed through branchial slits.

Selective retention

The ability of a fish to select and retain food items inside the mouth while spitting out non-food items when they are mixed.

Pyloric caeca

Finger-shaped pouches, usually found only in carnivorous fish, that secrete digestive enzymes and absorb nutrients.

Spleen

An organ in the fish digestive and circulatory system that primarily functions as a blood filter.

Kidney

A narrow, elongated organ that acts as an immune organ and osmoregulator in fishes.

Cyprinidae

A fish species family that is characterized by being stomachless throughout their entire life.

Demand feeder

A self-feeding system in aquaculture where fish hit a switch to trigger the release of formulated feed from a leak hole.