KNOW ABOUT ANIMALS

What Is a Fish?
Fishes come in an amazing variety of shapes and colors, but they all have three important things in common: All fishes live in water, have fins, and use gills to get oxygen from the water. We have also included a few sea creatures -- some jellyfish and octopods

What Do Fishes Eat?
Fishes eat many kinds of food, including insects, worms, snails, clams, and other fishes. Only a few kinds of fishes eat plants. Fishes will usually eat whatever is plentiful and easy to catch, but most are specialized in some way to feed on a particular food. You can get an idea of what a fish likes to eat by studying its teeth and the shape of its body.

Throat Teeth
Besides the teeth that grow out of their jaws, some fishes also have teeth located behind the gills near the throat. They use them to eat prey in much the same way as they would use their regular teeth. Minnows and suckers have no teeth in their mouths. They shred, crush, and chew up all their food using their throat teeth.

Chew on This
Fishes usually swallow their food whole, but some have special teeth for shredding food or for crushing shells. Fishes like gars and pikes use their sharp, pointed teeth to grab and hold their prey before swallowing. Damselfishes and other species with patches of short, blunt teeth eat mostly small, soft-shelled animals. The Freshwater Drum crushes clams, snails, and other hard-shelled animals with its large throat teeth before it swallows them.

Chasers and Pouncers
How a fish catches its prey depends on the shape of its body. Slender, streamlined species, like billfishes, are fast swimmers that chase down speedy prey over a distance. Fishes with stout bodies, like basses, lie in wait for prey and ambush it when it swims by. Sunfishes have short, compressed bodies that enable them to make quick sharp turns and chase prey through vegetation,