![Pichi fish](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/78.jpg)
As Mexican blind cave fish swim through darkness, they detect their own waves bouncing off underwater walls around them. Some species use the currents created during swimming to their advantage. (Note to snorkelers who want to touch a fish: Go for the ones on the move.) In experiments, a swimming fish is half as likely to respond to the presence of a predator than one at rest, and some fish stay very still when trying to detect prey. For example, the fish’s brain may suppress its response while swimming, because it knows that water flow is likely to be intense during that time. Researchers have some interesting theories about how fish manage to distinguish the good currents from the bad currents. It could be because of currents, detritus or even the movement of the fish itself. Water is always passing over a fish’s skin, and not always because of a predator or prey. Those are the basics, but there are still several mysteries as to how fish make this system useful. In invertebrates, the cilia appear on the skin.” “We have cilia in our ear that are displaced by waves, sending signals to the brain to help with hearing and balance. “It’s very similar to the system in the human ear,” says Matthew McHenry, who studies animal sensation and movement at the University of California at Irvine. The cupula detects that the hair has been displaced and sends a signal to the brain to indicate that something is moving in the water nearby. When water passes over the neuromast, it pushes hairlike cells that are surrounded by a gel called cupula.
Pichi fish skin#
“They can detect mechanical vibrations in the water.”įish have sensory organs known as neuromasts located both on their skin and in channels just beneath the skin. “Fish have what some people call a ‘sixth sense’ or ‘touch at a distance,’ ” says Allen Mensinger, who studies how fish sense and respond to cues at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. But the instant before your finger can make contact, they dart off.
![pichi fish pichi fish](https://www.foxyfolksy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Pichi-pichi-recipe-pin-300x300.jpg)
The fish will let you get close, even reach out to touch them. Or perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to go snorkeling in a place such as Hawaii’s partially submerged Molikini crater, so densely packed with marine life that you feel you can barely turn around without smacking a fish across the face. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to touch a fish in the water? Maybe you’ve stood on the beach with a school of fish swimming around you and attempted to grab one.
![Pichi fish](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/78.jpg)