What Are Fish?

What Are Fish? — page 1 — Fish are a kind of animal that lives in water They come in many sizes shapes and colors Gobies one of the smallest ﬁsh are less than half an inch 13 millimeters long The whale shark the largest ﬁsh can be 59 feet 18 meters long Some ﬁsh are plain while others like FISH ARE AMAZING Gobies are one of the largest ﬁsh orders There are more than 2,000 species 4

What Are Fish? — page 2 — clownﬁsh and lionﬁsh have bright colors and patterns There are ﬁsh that look like plants rocks or snakes There are ﬁsh that can change color and some that glow in the dark Fish live almost anywhere there is water including rivers lakes and oceans They are a major source of food for people and for other animals Fish are the oldest known vertebrates they have lived on Earth for more than 450 million years There are more than thirty thousand species or kinds of ﬁsh New ones are discovered every year Vertebrates are animals that have a backbone Coelacanths SEEL-uh kanths ﬁrst appeared on Earth about 350 million years ago Vocabulary 5

What Are Fish? — page 3 — Fish live all around the world Most ﬁsh are cold blooded which means they cannot make their own heat Their bodies are the temperature of the water around them Some ﬁsh live in warm tropical waters while others live in icy Arctic seas A HOME UNDER WATER Tropical ﬁsh like these masked butterﬂy ﬁsh prefer warmer waters 6

What Are Fish? — page 4 — Fish live in all kinds of water Marine ﬁsh live in or near oceans which have salt water Freshwater ﬁsh live in lakes rivers or streams Some ﬁsh such as certain species of salmon and sturgeon live most of their lives in salt water but migrate or travel to freshwater rivers to reproduce No ﬁsh can live in water that is extremely salty For instance the Great Salt Lake in the United States and the Dead Sea in the Middle East contain so much salt that ﬁsh cannot live there Fish are cold-blooded In what ways is this helpful to them Think About It When they are ready to reproduce salmon migrate from the sea back to the same freshwater river where they were born 7

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