Buzz
You’re likely familiar with the flavor of fish, but have you ever wondered how fish experience taste? Like all vertebrates, fish possess five senses, one of which is taste. And their sense of taste might be more advanced than yours.
For fish, tasting isn’t just a function of their tongues. They have taste buds not only on their tongues but also on their lips and even their bodies. Taste buds require moisture to function (try eating with a dry mouth), and since fish live in water, their taste buds thrive on the skin of their flanks and fins, as well as inside their mouths.
Being able to taste with their bodies allows fish to detect food before it’s anywhere near their mouths. Rather than simply smelling nearby food, they can taste it from a distance. Bottom-dwelling fish like catfish are particularly sensitive tasters, which helps them identify food in dark, murky waters. The channel catfish, for example, has approximately 680,000 taste buds [PDF] spread all over its body, including its whisker-like barbels. That’s an extraordinarily high number compared to most animals (humans have around 5,000 taste buds in their mouths).
Having taste buds located outside their bodies could assist fish in determining what to eat when they can’t rely on their sense of smell (fish possess nostrils and detect chemical signals much like we do when we smell—without needing air, of course). A study on another scavenger, the deep-sea grenadier, found that the fish’s ability to smell became less effective at close distances, prompting the fish to search with its barbels instead.
It’s similar to having taste buds at the tips of your fingers.
