Can fish taste food?
- Thread starter Fish_Admirer17
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I would say yes. I've watched my fish mouth something, chew it and spit it out....I would conclude it tasted bad.
oh ok guys..But is it really the sense of taste that helps them determine which food they like and not some chemical sensor which senses the composition of the food to determine what is good to eat..I mean for example, a snake...It can't really smell its pray but it uses its tongue to "taste" the air to locate it..And a bat which can't really see but uses echo-location to navigate through the area..Do you think fish have a similar sense that is used to substitute taste or am I just taking this too far..
Fish_Admirer17;4179276; said:
What exactly do you think our sense of "taste" is? It's chemoperception - the sensing of the chemical composition of food. It's probably more highly evolved in humans in that our brains can decipher the neurological signals into a broader range of subtle flavors, but the basic principle is the same in other animals and fish.
Fish have taste receptors on their heads, barbels and mouths and express many genes homologous to the ones that are found in mammalian taste buds. Studies in zebra fish indicate that they have taste reception for amino acids, and maybe lipids, but don't seem to respond to sugars.
