Art. VI.] Hekrick, Taste in Fishes.- 6i 



The behavior of the suckers was totally different. These 

 fishes lie on the bottom most of the time unless disturbed, 

 though if frightened they are very active, swimming powerfully 

 and leaping out of the water. When food is thrown in they 

 never pay the slightest attention, nor are they attracted by the 

 sight of other fishes struggling for the meat. They are exceed- 

 ingly shy and rarely eat when under observation. They lie 

 quietly much of the time or swim slowly about dragging the 

 fleshy lips of the highly protrusible mouth over the bottom of 

 the tank. If they thus happen upon a bit of meat, this is 

 sucked into the mouth, worked over with the pharyngeal teeth 

 apparently, and then often ejected forcibly from the mouth, to 

 be again taken perhaps and the process repeated — a behavior 

 very characteristic of the way they take the bait, I am told by 

 fishermen. 



The cat fish, like the suckers, keep strictly to the bottom 

 of the tank. They are often quiet in the darkest corners or 

 lying under debris, but much of the time are slowly dragging 

 the mental and post-mental barblets along the bottom. The 

 nasal barblets are held projecting well upward, and the maxil- 

 lary barblets are directed outward and backward, their tips 

 trailing the bottom or waving gently back and forth. They 

 appear never to use their eyes directly for catching food to the 

 slightest degree under the conditions of these experiments. No 

 attention is paid to particles of food thrown into the water, 

 even though they settle down within a few millimeters of the 

 nose or barblet of the fish. The only case observed by me in 

 which the eyes seem to serve in finding food is when a large 

 piece of meat is thrown in and one fish begins to "worry" it. 

 His movements may attract others until as many fish as can 

 reach it are all tugging at it at once. If, however, a shadow is 

 caused to fall upon the water, as by hovering the hand over the 

 aquarium, the fishes are greatly disturbed and dart wildly 

 about. They always seek the darkest corners of the tank and 

 lie under dead leaves resting on the bottom of the tank for the 

 most part, showing that the eyes are not by any means tunc- 

 tionless and the fishes are strongly negatively phototactic. 



