A fish (pl.
: fish or fishes) is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with
swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits. Fish can be grouped into
the more basal jawless fish and the more common jawed fish, the latter including
all living cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as the
extinct placoderms and acanthodians. Most fish are cold-blooded, their body
temperature varying with the surrounding water, though some large active
swimmers like white shark and tuna can hold a higher core temperature. Many fish
can communicate acoustically with each other, such as during courtship displays. The
study of fish is known as ichthyology.
The earliest fish appeared during the Cambrian as small filter feeders; they continued
to evolve through the Paleozoic, diversifying into many forms. The earliest fish with
dedicated respiratory gills and paired fins, the ostracoderms, had heavy bony plates that
served as protective exoskeletons against invertebrate predators. The first fish
with jaws, the placoderms, appeared in the Silurian and greatly diversified during
the Devonian, the "Age of Fishes".
Bony fish, distinguished by the presence of swim bladders and
later ossified endoskeletons, emerged as the dominant group of fish after the end-
Devonian extinction wiped out the apex predators, the placoderms. Bony fish are further
divided into the lobe-finned and ray-finned fish. About 96% of all living fish species
today are teleosts, a crown group of ray-finned fish that can protrude their jaws.
The tetrapods, a mostly terrestrial clade of vertebrates that have dominated the
top trophic levels in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems since the Late Paleozoic,
evolved from lobe-finned fish during the Carboniferous, developing air-
breathing lungs homologous to swim bladders. Despite the cladistic lineage, tetrapods
are usually not considered to be fish, making "fish" a paraphyletic group.
Fish have been an important natural resource for humans since prehistoric times,
especially as food. Commercial and subsistence fishers harvest fish in wild
fisheries or farm them in ponds or in breeding cages in the ocean. Fish are caught
for recreation, or raised by fishkeepers as ornaments for private and public exhibition
in aquaria and garden ponds. Fish have had a role in human culture through the ages,
serving as deities, religious symbols, and as the subjects of art, books and movies.
