Most people can easily answer the question of what are the baby dogs or pigs called. But what if the question were: "What are the young fish called at birth and in their early stages? ". Like other animals, they also have a name that serves to refer to this type of offspring. However, it is a name that we use much less frequently and that, consequently, usually If you want to know a little more about baby fish and remember what they are called, keep reading Green Ecologist and we will tell you about it.
What is a fish - easy definition
Fish are a type of animal that is characterized by being aquatic vertebrates, equipped with fins that they use as a locomotor apparatus, that is, to move, and that breathe through gills. The gills are the organs that allow them to capture the oxygen present in the water to, in this way, breathe in the same way that some land animals use their lungs to take oxygen from the air.
Inside the world of fishThere is a great variety of these animals, from those that live in freshwater rivers and lakes to those that inhabit saltwater seas, going through a wide range of sizes and characteristics. In this way, when we talk about fish, we are referring both to the tiny colorful fish that can be found in some tropical environments to the great white sharks, through cold-water fish, such as salmon, or river fish, such as trout.
How fish reproduce
The fish reproduction, which is the way in which we are going to be able to know their young, it is not uniform. In this way, we will be able to find fish that reproduce in the three most common ways that an animal can.
Viviparous reproduction
It is a type of sexual reproduction in which fertilization occurs inside the female and, in addition, they expel or give birth to their young as young individuals already formed. It is a form of reproduction that is not one of the most common among fish, but it can be given. Some examples are found in sharks and rays.
Ovoviviparous reproduction
In this case, it is also a type of sexual reproduction in which the fertilization of the eggs occurs internally in the female's body. However, in this case, what the female expels is not already formed young hatchlings, but fertilized eggs that will still have to develop before the hatchling emerges and is self-sufficient and can move around. This is an unusual reproduction for fish, especially marine fish.
Oviparous reproduction
It is undoubtedly the most common reproduction in the case of fish. On this occasion, the female expels the ovules to the outside environment and the male expels the sperm on them, with which they are fertilized in the water and become fertilized eggs that must develop in the outside environment before the offspring itself is born. .
What are the baby fish called?
Regardless of the type of reproduction carried out by each species of fish, it will be considered as baby fish to the individual who has left the larval stage of fish (that is, it has abandoned the egg or has been expelled from the interior of its mother) and that it has not yet fully developed as an adult, which is usually considered from the moment they develop reproductive capacity.
In this state, which goes from when a fish leaves the larval stage until it becomes an adult individual with reproductive capacity, the fish is called as fry, what is the name given to young fish. Fingerlings are the offspring of any type of fish, regardless of the species to which they belong. Although, in general, it is used more frequently in the case of the salmonid family. Likewise, the term fingerling can also be used in some cases for the period in which the fish hatchling has not yet hatched from the egg but which, due to the advanced stage of growth, can already be observed within it with most of its formed and defined anatomy.
In this way, talking about fish hatchlings is talking about the fry, regardless of the species to which they belong. This does not happen with most other animals. In fact, talking about young horses is talking about foals, talking about young rabbits is talking about kits, talking about young dogs is talking about puppies, etc.
However, this is not due to a really biological issue, but rather a linguistic one. It cannot be forgotten that the names of the baby animals are given by human language and, in this sense, human language needs more specific words to define those realities that are closest to it. In this way, the evolution of language has made it necessary for us to have concrete words to determine the offspring of those animals that are closest and most common to us. On the contrary, in the case of fish, given that their natural habitat is water, our interaction with them has always been less, which has meant that (at least in colloquial language) we have been able to make ourselves understood by having to use a the only word to encompass all the young fish, regardless of the species to which each individual in particular belonged.
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