Gail Gray, age 11, of Manchester, Mo., for her question:

DO FISH HAVE EARS?

If you thought that a fish's ears were those two round flaps on the side of his head, just about where our own ears are placed, you would be wrong. Those are his gill covers. They protect the delicate filaments he uses instead of lungs to take oxygen from the water.

You will not find protruding ears on the fish. But he has a pair of very sharp internal ears, tucked away inside his head. The external shell like ears on a human are not the most important part of the hearing equipment. They merely help to gather sounds from all around and direct them to the inner ears. The real hearing is done by those inner ears which are safely buried inside the bones of your skull. Birds have no outer ears because they fly through buffering winds. Their sensitive inner ears are inside their heads, too.

If a fish had a pair of outer ears, they would be a problem. His life depends on swimming and that calls for a streamlined body to slip smoothly through the water. The gill cases that look like ears on the sides of his head are curved backward. As he swims forward, the water streams over them. But the water would stream inside a pair of shell shaped outer ears.

The fish's inner ears are covered with skin. They are very sharp to catch sounds vibrating through the water. And they even hear sounds in the air above. If you are lucky enough to go fishing with an expert, you will be told to stay very quiet. The bass and the trout can hear you. They do not know what the sounds mean  and they do not wait around to find out.  A fish's sharp ears also have delicate organs to help him keep his body balance

These are somewhat like the balancing organs built into the human inner ear.

The striped bass has special cells in his skin that help him to hear vibrations in somewhat the same way as we sense things by touch. These sensing cells are a system of tiny canals under the skin. They connect with the outside through pore openings in the skin. In the striped bass, these pores are arranged in a row along each of his sides. If you look closely you can see this so called lateral line. Some fish, but not all, have sensitive lateral lines to aid hearing work done by their inner ears.

Fish have sense organs for tasting and smelling, too. Some have barbels or feelers to explore their surroundings by touch. But most fish depend on the vision of their eyes. However, they do not have to blink and shut out the scenery as we do. Their eyes are constantly open.