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Meristics is an area of zoology and botany which relates to counting quantitative features of animals and plants, such as the number of fins or scales in fish.A meristic (countable trait) can be used to describe a particular species, or used to identify an unknown species.
Fish use fins to propel and stabilise themselves in the water. Over 33,000 species of fish have been described as of 2017, [ 1 ] of which about 20,000 are marine fish. [ 2 ]
Many fish have a number of small outpocketings, called pyloric caeca, along their intestine. The purpose of the caeca is to increase the overall surface area of the intestines, thereby increasing the absorption of nutrients. [32] [33] The number of pyloric caeca varies widely between species, and in some species of fish no caeca are present at all.
The giant sunfish is the heaviest bony fish in the world, in late 2021, Portuguese fishermen found a dead sunfish near the coast of Faial Island, Azores, with a weight of 2,744 kilograms (6,049 lb) and 3.6 metres (12 ft) tall and 3.5 metres (11 ft) long established the biggest giant sunfish ever captured.
The modern lungfishes have a number of larval features, which suggest paedomorphosis. They also demonstrate the largest genome among the vertebrates. Modern lungfish all have an elongate body with fleshy, paired pectoral and pelvic fins and a single unpaired caudal fin replacing the dorsal , caudal and anal fins of most fishes.
Sarcopterygii (/ ˌ s ɑːr k ɒ p t ə ˈ r ɪ dʒ i. aɪ /; from Ancient Greek σάρξ (sárx) 'flesh' and πτέρυξ (ptérux) 'wing, fin') — sometimes considered synonymous with Crossopterygii (from Ancient Greek κροσσός (krossós) 'fringe') — is a clade (traditionally a class or subclass) of vertebrate animals which includes a group of bony fish commonly referred to as lobe ...
Actinopterygii (/ ˌ æ k t ɪ n ɒ p t ə ˈ r ɪ dʒ i aɪ /; from Ancient Greek ἀκτίς (aktis) 'having rays' and πτέρυξ (ptérux) 'wing, fins'), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish [2] that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. [3]
Fish bone is any bony tissue in a fish, although in common usage the term refers specifically to delicate parts of the non-vertebral skeleton of such as ribs, fin spines and intramuscular bones. Not all fish have fish bones in this sense; for instance, eels and anglerfish do not possess bones other than the cranium and the vertebrae.